I am a young researcher passionate about public health research, teaching and mentoring the younger generation. As a faculty lecturer in Public Health Nutrition, at the most prestigious medical school in Cameroon, I am interested in developing the first master programs in public health nutrition in the entire country. However, we lack expertise within the country. The Hong Kong Laureate Forum offers an opportunity to interact and build partnerships with the diverse researchers and other stakeholders from all over the globe that will be present at this forum. In addition, the forum offers an opportunity to present my research findings to an international and multidisciplinary audience and gain valuable insights and collaborators. I will also be able to share my unique experience of conducting fieldwork and sourcing funding in a low-resource setting with other young researchers. I hope to learn from other researchers what it means in practice to involve communities in the design and development of research projects and the impact that this has had on their research outcomes and acceptability of research findings.

Faculty of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, University of Yaounde 1

Broadly, my research interest is in unraveling the link between dietary intake and non-communicable diseases such as diabetes in sub-Saharan African populations undergoing nutritional transition, particularly in children given that dietary habits acquired in childhood tend to track through to adulthood. Preliminary data from our group shows that food insecurity is one of the main reasons for poor treatment adherence in patients with type 1 diabetes. This ultimately increases the risk of complications including death in this population. I am currently working on assessing the efficacy and acceptability of a contextually adapted meal replacement therapy for children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes living in Cameroon. This meal replacement therapy has the potential to transform the lives of children with type 1 diabetes whose quality of life is threatened by food insecurity.