Lavender Otieno

Dr Lavender Otieno is an ECR Research Fellow in the College of Medicine and Public Health. She currently manages an MRFF funded project called SMART-PH (Digitising Information for Practice in Public Health), Australia’s first integrated public health and clinical data platform. SMART-PH aims to function as a common digital infrastructure to eliminate data siloes and improve healthcare decision making by enabling real-time collaboration and communication of information. Dr Otieno earned her BSc (Biomedical Science), BHMS (Hons) and PhD (2022) at the University of Adelaide and went on to work at the interface of research and public health policy at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI) where she focused on the concerning rise in nicotine use among young Australians. Through collaboration with policy makers and public health researchers, Dr Otieno managed a government funded yearlong project aimed at identifying key areas for policy interventions to curb the growing access and use of nicotine vaping products among adolescents and young people.