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Shehnaz Munshi

Research Project Manager; Associate Lecturer, Sheiham Family Program, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg

Shehnaz (MPH) is a health policy and systems researcher and activist with a particular interest in feminist, decolonial scholarship and praxis. She is also an occupational therapist with 10 years of experience serving vulnerable and marginalised communities in South Africa and the UK. She is the cofounder of African Health Futures, an initiative aimed at re-imagining health systems drawing on transformative, indigenous, feminist approaches to achieve health equity and social justice. Currently Shehnaz manages the Sheiham Family/Wits Programme on social determinants of health and health inequality at the School of Public Health, Wits University. She was also a researcher on a behaviour change intervention study called the 'Sonke CHANGE Trial’, which sought to determine the effectiveness of a multi-level gender-transformation model in preventing men’s use of violence against woman and girls. She is a senior Atlantic Fellow for Health Equity at Tekano, and was named an Emerging Voices for Global Health in 2018. Shehnaz serves on the steering committee of the People’s Health Movement, a global network of grassroots health activists, civil society organisations and academics committed to advocating for affordable, accessible, equitable health for all. Her research, policy engagement and activism has focused on strengthening the implementation of a community health worker policy and primary health care re-engineering policy in an NHI context.