Bio

Mike English is a UK trained paediatrician who has worked in Kenya for over 20 years supported by a series of Wellcome fellowships. His work often takes Child and Newborn Health as a focus but increasingly tackles health services or wider health systems issues. He works as part of the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme (KWTRP) in collaboration in Kenya with the Ministry of Health and a wide set of national and international collaborators. His work focuses predominantly on improving care in African Hospitals. The work of his team spans: clinical epidemiology (including developing national, evidence-based guidelines for care of severely ill children and newborns, clinical trials and observational studies); implementation research (including cluster randomised trials and mixed methods research), and health systems research (qualitative studies of health worker and managers’ behaviour and rethinking the health workforce).

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Current Work

He co-leads Health Systems Research in KWTRP and established the Oxford Health Systems Research Collaboration (OHSCAR). Recently Mike helped establish a team focused on delivering simulation based training using gamification through mobile phones and virtual reality (https://oxlifeproject.org/). Mike’s 2013-2018 fellowship initiated the Kenyan Clinical Information Network (CIN). Working with 15 hospitals and focused on generating high quality routine data the CIN is exploring how to improve hospital care at scale while using aggregate data to trial feedback interventions and understand practice variation. Other major current work includes a 4.5 year project on how to improve health care provision for sick newborns, work that spans measuring effective coverage and multiple methodological approaches to inform thinking on the challenges of delivering effective nursing care and possible task-shifting. Mike frequently provides advice to the Kenyan government and WHO on a range of issues related to child and newborn survival and health systems performance and is a member of the Lancet Global Health Commission on High Quality Health Systems in the SDG Era (https://www.hqsscommission.org/).

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Recent publications

Reducing global inequities in medical oxygen access: the Lancet Global Health Commission on medical oxygen security.
Graham, H. R., King, C., Rahman, A. E., Kitutu, F. E., Greenslade, L., Aqeel, M., Baker, T., de Magalhães Brito, L. F., Campbell, H., Czischke, K., English, M., Falade, A. G., Garcia, P. J., Gil, M., Graham, S. M., Gray, A. Z., Howie, S. R. C., Kissoon, N., Laxminarayan, R., Li Lin, I., Lipnick, M. S., Lowe, D. B., Lowrance, D., McCollum, E. D., Mvalo, T., Oliwa, J., Swartling Peterson, S., Workneh, R. S., Zar, H. J., El Arifeen, S., Ssengooba, F.
Lancet Glob Health, (2025). :

After neonatal care, what next? A qualitative study of mothers' post-discharge experiences after premature birth in Kenya.
Maluni, J., Oluoch, D., Molyneux, S., Boga, M., Jones, C., Murila, F., English, M., Ziebland, S., Hinton, L.
Int J Equity Health, (2025). 24:17

Effects of health system limitations on the use of blood culture and sensitivity testing in Kenyan county hospitals: an interview-based qualitative study using causal loop diagrams.
Bahati, F., Mutua, E., Akech, S., English, M., Nyamwaya, B., Gachoki, J., McKnight, J.
Lancet Microbe, (2024). :100945

Public perception of the physician associate profession in the UK: a systematic review.
Swainston, R., Zhao, Y., Harriss, E., Leckcivilize, A., English, M., Nagraj, S.
BMC Health Serv Res, (2024). 24:1509

Identifying and quantifying initial post-discharge needs for clinical review of sick, newborns in Kenya based on a large multi-site, retrospective cohort study.
Wainaina, J., Lee, E., Irimu, G., Aluvaala, J., English, M.
Front Pediatr, (2024). 12:1374629