The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine was established in 1898, with a donation from shipping magnate Sir Alfred Lewis Jones following a number of people being admitted to local hospitals with ‘tropical’ diseases. The site has occupied its current location since 1920, and in 1921, an affiliated laboratory was established in Sierra Leone. Today LSTM continues its tradition of developing strong links with and supporting research overseas institutions, including the Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Programme in Blantyre, which is an AMBITION recruiting site.

LSTM offers a varied postgraduate programme covering taught Masters, short courses and research degrees. Research spans basic laboratory work, translational research and policy interventions. LSTM recently announced plans to join forces with the University of Manchester’s Humanitarian Conflict & Response Unit to establish an educational programme to enrich the skills of field-based personnel working for Médécins Sans Frontières.

LSTM AMBITION Team

Prof. David Lalloo: Senior Investigator

I am Professor of Tropical Medicine and Dean of Clinical Sciences and International Public Health at LSTM. I am also Director of the Liverpool Glasgow Wellcome Trust Centre for Global Health Research and the Wellcome Trust Clinical PhD Programme, and am heavily involved in guiding and supporting the careers of young UK and African scientists. I am an academic clinician in Tropical Medicine and Infectious Diseases with a major research interest in clinical trials in resource poor settings, particularly in HIV and associated infections, malaria and envenoming. I also run a number of multidisciplinary research projects in HIV and malaria.

I have a longstanding interest in treatment and prophylaxis of cryptococcal disease, and along with Dr. Henry Mwandumba, I am responsible for the Blantyre site for AMBITION. I also sit on the Trial Steering Group.

Prof. Shabbar Jaffar: Senior Investigator

I am a Professor of Epidemiology and the Head of International Public Health at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. I have previously lived in The Gambia, Uganda, Malawi and South Africa.

I am a HIV clinical trialist, and worked closely with colleagues at SGUL on the ACTA, AMBITION Phase II and REMSTART trials. I have recently developed an interest in diabetes and cardiovascular disease control but my focus will always remain HIV, particularly prevention of late-stage mortality.

I provide support and oversight to AMBITION in trial design, statistics, and data.  I also sit on the TMG.

Prof. Louis Niessen: Senior Health Economist

I am a Professor in International Health and hold an LSTM Chair in Health Economics. I am an Adjunct Professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, a former NIH-funded Centre Director at icddrb, Bangladesh, the founding Professor of the LSTM economics group and a lead author of a new Lancet Series on Poverty and Disease.

My research focusses on the importance and contributions of tropical medicine and international health from the societal perspective, across the globe, addressing infectious and chronic diseases, well-being, and poverty. I lead research and teach on effectiveness, efficiency & equity impact of health system interventions & health services, to support social policy, environment, public health, and health care policies, including inequalities, in international health and health technology assessment.

My research includes real-life experiments, statistical / mathematical models and systematic economic reviews, and covers epidemiology, public health and population research, economics and economic evaluation.

As Senior Health Economist, I lead on Work Package 2 (economic analyses), working with colleagues at LSTM and at our African partner organisations. I also delivered the AMBITION Health Economics Course in Blantyre in November 2017. Further information can be found on my LSTM profile. 

Prof. Duolao Wang: Senior Statistician

I am Professor of Biostatistics at the LSTM Tropical Clinical Trials Unit, with over 30 years’ experience in clinical trials and epidemiological studies. I have designed and/or analysed more than 100 clinical trials and the published high-profile studies include CHARM programme (Cardiovascular drug, 1 paper in JAMA), PARTNER Cohort B and A trials (Cardiovascular devices, three publications in NEJM), Beating Heart Study (Surgery, published in NEJM), ACE (Diabetic drug, published in the Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology), CHAMP trial (Cognitive behaviour therapy, published in the Lancet), PM trial (Stress Intervention, published in JAMA), PLACIDE trial (Probiotics, published in the Lancet), WHO Abortion trial (Medical abortion drug and services, published in the Lancet), and CAPS trial (Cooking Stove, Published in the Lancet).

My methodological interests include statistical issues in the design, analysis and reporting of clinical trials (including ordinal or non-Normal outcomes, composite endpoints, quasi-experimental design, Bayesian analysis, meta-analysis, and trial simulation) and observational studies (including big data analysis, machine learning, data mining, propensity score approach, longitudinal data and multilevel modeling, prognostic models, and non-parametric regression). Areas of applied research include infectious disease, cardiovascular disease, oncology, maternal and child health, mental health, nutrition, respiratory disease, tropical disease, and translational research.

I provide statistical support to the AMBITION trial in design, analysis, and reporting.

Dr. Tinevimbo Shiri: Health Economist

I am an infectious disease modeller / health economist, and studied computational and applied mathematics at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. For the past seven years, I have been working on pneumococcal disease in South Africa and the United Kingdom. Before I joined LSTM, I was leading the pneumococcal disease modelling work at Warwick University, Clinical Trials Division. This work was part of the Mathematical & Economic Modelling for Vaccination and Immunisation Evaluation (MEMVIE) project that brings cutting-edge research techniques in mathematical modelling and health economics to provide complementary second opinion and advice on the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of pneumococcal vaccination programmes in the United Kingdom.

My research interests include applying and developing statistical and data-driven computational models to better understand the dynamics of pathogens and disease control, and evaluating the effectiveness of health interventions.

Annmarie Hand: Administrator

I joined LSTM in 2009, initially working in the Director’s office before taking up my current role working as Executive Assistant to Prof. David Lalloo, Dean of Clinical Sciences & International Public Health, and with Prof. Bertie Squire supporting the Collaboration for Applied Health Research and Delivery (CAHRD).

My main role within AMBITION is to provide administrative support to the team based at LSTM.