{"id":91518,"date":"2025-03-20T04:00:43","date_gmt":"2025-03-20T08:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/?p=91518"},"modified":"2025-03-21T15:53:14","modified_gmt":"2025-03-21T19:53:14","slug":"ph-d-student-maps-nigerian-meningitis-belt-to-improve-public-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/03_20_2025\/ph-d-student-maps-nigerian-meningitis-belt-to-improve-public-health","title":{"rendered":"Ph.D. Student Maps Nigerian Meningitis Belt to Improve Public Health"},"content":{"rendered":"

January 2020 was perhaps not the best time to move to a new country to begin a doctoral program in the United States.<\/p>\n

But the coronavirus pandemic that upended life across the country shortly thereafter also presented opportunities to a student like Olawale \u201cFemi\u201d Oluwafemi, who had just enrolled in the Spatially Integrated Social Sciences<\/a> Ph.D. program at The University of Toledo.<\/p>\n

\"Portrait

Olawale \u201cFemi\u201d Oluwafemi is a doctoral student in Spatially Integrated Social Sciences.<\/p><\/div>\n

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<\/a>. In doing so, he charted a new path for himself in academia.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat project was what initiated my passion for medical geography,\u201d Oluwafemi said.<\/p>\n

After more than five years at one of the country\u2019s 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\u2019s exploring how climate change and socio-economic disparities may aggravate the transmission of meningococcal meningitis across sub-Saharan Africa.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy joy is to give back to my country,\u201d Oluwafemi said. \u201cBy unraveling the causes of this serious disease, we are also improving the public health of Nigerians.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oluwafemi brought extensive educational and professional experiences to UToledo, holding a bachelor\u2019s degree and two master\u2019s degrees in geography, remote sensing and geographic information systems and logging nearly a decade as a scientific officer with Nigeria\u2019s National Space Research and Development Agency.<\/p>\n

His background positioned him well for the Spatially Integrated Social Science program in UToledo\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s part an extensive research ecosystem at UToledo, which logged more than $72.2 million<\/a> in competitive external awards in fiscal year 2024 and was recognized with a prestigious R1 Classification<\/a> in the latest Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education.<\/p>\n

Oluwafemi learned about the valuable opportunities at UToledo from Dr. Kevin Czajkowski, a Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Geography and Planning.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s been a graduate research assistant for Czajkowski\u2019s GLOBE Mission EARTH<\/a> since 2020.<\/p>\n

\u201cFemi took a leap of faith in coming to Toledo to be a Ph.D. student in the Spatially Integrated Social Science program,\u201d Czajkowski said. \u201cWe\u2019re glad he did. He\u2019s an exceptional student, and his work is instrumental in understanding how meningitis spreads in sub-Saharan Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oluwafemi had some experience in medical geography going into his dissertation. As a graduate student at Obafemi Awolowo University, he\u2019d 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\u2019s risk of infection.<\/p>\n

Oluwafemi chose to focus on meningococcal meningitis for his doctoral dissertation after a conversation with a friend describing a patient\u2019s startlingly rapid decline.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat caught my attention,\u201d he recalled. \u201cI started thinking about how it could be tackled or even eradicated. So I jumped online and started looking into it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cMeningitis is a weather-dependent disease,\u201d he said, pointing to research linking extremely high temperatures with increased risk. \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cBased on my preliminary findings, the Nigerian meningitis belt is swelling to the south,\u201d he said. \u201cWe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what the research is all about,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s what\u2019s propelling me forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"Portrait<\/a>

Olawale \u201cFemi\u201d Oluwafemi is on the cusp of defending a dissertation through the Spatially Integrated Social Sciences program in the Department of Geography and Planning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":908,"featured_media":91519,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,60,1,3,71,7],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91518"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/908"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91518"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91521,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91518\/revisions\/91521"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}