Low and Middle Income Countries

Lola Kola, PhD is a Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Psychiatry, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. She is also an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology and Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences, Lead City University, Ibadan. Lola is a Medical Sociologist with a background in social work and has clinical experience working with people with mental illness.

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Dr. Kola has served as Co-Investigator on research projects leveraging mHealth in Africa to improve care for perinatal women and adults with depression. She has managed projects on the use of mobile phones for clinician support and supervision, encouraging treatment compliance in perinatal adolescents and women. Her work has also focused on designing an mHealth adaptation of the WHO Mental Health GAP Intervention Guide for use by front-line primary care workers in Nepal and Nigeria. Lola has worked as a National Consultant for Mental Health with the World Health Organisation Office in Abuja, Nigeria. Having participated in research throughout nine Sub-Saharan African countries, Dr. Kola has extensive familiarity with the opportunities and challenges experienced by low and middle-income countries.  

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Dr. Kola was named an NIH Emerging Global Leader by the National Institute of Health (NIH) and has been awarded funding for 5 years to further her mentorship training with Dr. Dror Ben-Zeev at the University of Washington, Seattle. Her NIH funded research involves user centered design in the development of mhealth interventions to complement primary care for Adolescent Perinatal Depression in Ibadan, Nigeria.