January 2020 was perhaps not the best time to move to a new country to begin a doctoral program in the United States.
But the coronavirus pandemic that upended life across the country shortly thereafter also presented opportunities to a student like Olawale “Femi” Oluwafemi, who had just enrolled in the Spatially Integrated Social Sciences Ph.D. program at The University of Toledo.
Olawale “Femi” Oluwafemi is a doctoral student in Spatially Integrated Social Sciences.
Oluwafemi was able to quickly apply his skills in geospatial technologies to assess the influence of socio-economic and health conditions on virus mortality in the first six months of the pandemic in research that he and collaborators published in 2022 in the peer-reviewed journal Applied Geography. In doing so, he charted a new path for himself in academia.
“That project was what initiated my passion for medical geography,” Oluwafemi said.
After more than five years at one of the country’s top-tier research universities, Oluwafemi is now on the cusp of earning his UToledo doctorate with a dissertation that has real-world impacts in his home country of Nigeria. He’s exploring how climate change and socio-economic disparities may aggravate the transmission of meningococcal meningitis across sub-Saharan Africa.
“My joy is to give back to my country,” Oluwafemi said. “By unraveling the causes of this serious disease, we are also improving the public health of Nigerians.”
Oluwafemi brought extensive educational and professional experiences to UToledo, holding a bachelor’s degree and two master’s degrees in geography, remote sensing and geographic information systems and logging nearly a decade as a scientific officer with Nigeria’s National Space Research and Development Agency.
His background positioned him well for the Spatially Integrated Social Science program in UToledo’s Department of Geography and Planning, one of the only programs of its kind to apply geospatial technologies like remote sensing, digital cartography and geographic information systems to the study of human and social dynamics.
It’s part an extensive research ecosystem at UToledo, which logged more than $72.2 million in competitive external awards in fiscal year 2024 and was recognized with a prestigious R1 Classification in the latest Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education.
Oluwafemi learned about the valuable opportunities at UToledo from Dr. Kevin Czajkowski, a Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Geography and Planning.
The pair had met at an International Geographical Congress in Germany in 2012, where Czajkowski introduced Oluwafemi to Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE), an international science and education program that provides students, teachers and citizen scientists the opportunity to participate in data collection and contribute meaningfully to research on their local and global environments.
His interest piqued, Oluwafemi became active in the program and began to collaborate with Czajkowski through it from Nigeria. Oluwafemi has stayed involved since moving to Toledo, where he’s been a graduate research assistant for Czajkowski’s GLOBE Mission EARTH since 2020.
“Femi took a leap of faith in coming to Toledo to be a Ph.D. student in the Spatially Integrated Social Science program,” Czajkowski said. “We’re glad he did. He’s an exceptional student, and his work is instrumental in understanding how meningitis spreads in sub-Saharan Africa.”
Oluwafemi had some experience in medical geography going into his dissertation. As a graduate student at Obafemi Awolowo University, he’d mapped malaria incidence across the city that hosted his university, employing quantitative and qualitative research to discern some of the factors that contribute to a person’s risk of infection.
Oluwafemi chose to focus on meningococcal meningitis for his doctoral dissertation after a conversation with a friend describing a patient’s startlingly rapid decline.
“That caught my attention,” he recalled. “I started thinking about how it could be tackled or even eradicated. So I jumped online and started looking into it.”
Meningococcal meningitis is a bacterial form of meningitis, a serious infection that affects the thin lining that surrounds the brain and spinal cord. It can cause severe brain damage and, if untreated, is fatal in 50% of cases, according to the World Health Organization.
Meningococcal meningitis outbreaks occur seasonally in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly during dry months along a belt covering 26 countries from Senegal to Ethiopia. Large-scale outbreaks affect the population every five to 12 years.
In line with the interdisciplinary focus of his doctorate program, Oluwafemi sought to take a multifaceted look at what contributes to these outbreaks. He created a model that maps disease incidence in relation to factors like temperature and poverty.
“Meningitis is a weather-dependent disease,” he said, pointing to research linking extremely high temperatures with increased risk. “I also plugged in variables like unemployment and access to healthcare. When you want to investigate meningitis, you need to consider the factors that you think will predispose people.”
He expects his findings will aid public health officials in early identification and then early intervention ahead of potential outbreaks, in addition to clarifying an important baseline consideration: The meningitis belt is widening.
“Based on my preliminary findings, the Nigerian meningitis belt is swelling to the south,” he said. “We are beginning to see pockets of cases even in the southern part of the country, most importantly in Lagos. This raises questions about the impact of temperature.”
With his doctoral degree in hand, Oluwafemi hopes to continue to pursue this and other lines of research to improve public health in Nigeria and across Africa.
“That’s what the research is all about,” he said. “That’s what’s propelling me forward.”
