Author Profile

Lynn M Atuyambe

https://musph.ac.ug/

Affiliation: Department of Community Health and Behavioural Sciences, School of Public Health, College of Health Sciences, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda

Dr. Lynn M. Atuyambe has a Ph.D. in Public Health Sciences (International Health) from Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden. His Thesis was on adolescent health; teenage pregnancies and coping mechanisms in Uganda. He is an Associate Professor at the Makerere University School of Public Health (MakSPH) with close to 20 years of research experience especially in reproductive health. He teaches both undergraduate and postgraduate students. He supervises post graduate (MPH, HSR, MPHN, OBS/GYNAE) and Doctoral students at the College of Health Sciences. He is the coordinator for the course Advanced Qualitative Research Methods for Health Sciences. He runs the course Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health as well as Health Promotion, Health Education, Behavior Change Communication for the Post graduates at the MakSPH. Most of the research therefore has focused on health social and behaviors matters related to reproductive health. Specifically, tasks related to family planning, fertility and adolescent health and development including youth friendly services have been undertaken. Besides, he has participated in both qualitative and quantitative research projects in various capacities over the years. He is a trainer in Qualitative research methods, data collection techniques and analysis. His recent publications take a qualitative approach. He is very experienced in surveys in Uganda and the region. He has collaborated on research in Ethiopia, Ghana, Tanzania and Zambia. He has also served on evaluation teams for reproductive health programs as principal and co-investigator. Amongst baseline surveys conducted, topics have ranged from HIV/AIDS needs assessments for the community as well as persons living with AIDS (PLWAs) to HIV/AIDS evaluation programs. He has extensively worked in the domain of STI, Sexual maturation and health, Adolescent sexual and reproductive health. In HIV/AIDS specific topics have been on Adolescent reproductive health, child sexual abuse, STIs in the army in relation to migration and troop movements, Access to and patient selection for enhanced ART, AIDS District Assessment. Dr. Atuyambe’s recent publications have focused on adolescent reproductive health, Coping theories among pregnant adolescents, HIV/AIDS, ART access and fairness, Stigma and discrimination and HIV disclosure outcomes. Dr. Atuyambe has over 50 publications in peer reviewed journals http:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Atuyambe+L.

Recent Posts

Introduction: The occurrence of landslides and floods in East Africa has increased over the past decades with enormous Public Health implications and massive alterations in the lives of those affected. In Uganda, the Elgon region is reported to have the highest occurrence of landslides and floods making this area vulnerable. This study aimed at understanding both coping strategies and the underlying causes of vulnerability to landslides and floods in the Mt. Elgon region.

Methods: We conducted a qualitative study in three districts of Bududa, Manafwa and Butalejja in the Mt. Elgon region in eastern Uganda. Six Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) and eight Key Informant Interviews (KIIs) were conducted. We used trained research assistants (moderator and note taker) to collect data. All discussions were audio taped, and were transcribed verbatim before analysis. We explored both coping strategies and underlying causes of vulnerability. Data were analysed using latent content analysis; through identifying codes from which basis categories were generated and grouped into themes.

Results: The positive coping strategies used to deal with landslides and floods included adoption of good farming methods, support from government and other partners, livelihood diversification and using indigenous knowledge in weather forecasting and preparedness. Relocation was identified as unsustainable because people often returned back to high risk areas. The key underlying causes of vulnerability were; poverty, population pressure making people move to high risk areas, unsatisfactory knowledge on disaster preparedness and, cultural beliefs affecting people’s ability to cope.

Conclusion: This study revealed that deep rooted links to poverty, culture and unsatisfactory knowledge on disaster preparedness were responsible for failure to overcome the effects to landslides and floods in disaster prone communities of Uganda. However, good farming practices and support from the government and implementation partners were shown to be effective in enabling the community to lessen the negative effects disasters. This calls for high impact innovative interventions focused in addressing these underlying causes as well as involvement of all stakeholders in scaling the effective coping strategies in order to build resilience in this community and other similarly affected areas.

Key words: Coping, Underlying causes, Floods, Landslides, Mt. Elgon, Uganda