Kingsley Orievulu is a Research Associate at the Africa Health Research Institute (AHRI), KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. He is a social scientist with an interest in multidisciplinary approaches to health outcomes and a passion for development issues.
His research portfolio is centred around the social dimensions of climate change and environmental stressors impacting under-resourced societies and vulnerable populations such as people living with HIV, healthcare providers and their communities, in general. These are impacts linked to water stress, vulnerability to disease and disease progression, access to care, care utilisation and health systems resilience and adaptation. He also leads projects on socio-ethical dimensions of research during disasters; socio-contextual drivers of vaccine perceptions, uptake, and confidence or hesitancy among rural and urban populations; and community-led multi-stakeholder-focused solutions to water security challenges in local communities within uMkhanyakude.
Dr Orievulu earned his PhD in Development studies from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. His ongoing interconnected projects seek to: evaluate the socioeconomic and production-loss impacts of floods on people living with HIV (S3E project); to explore perspectives of health practitioners regarding the preparedness and readiness of the local health system to recurrent extreme weather shocks (CC&HS Resilience study); to understand the depth of the challenges of water insecurity exacerbated by climate change in a rural community, and collaboratively identify adaptable solutions that are community-led (ACU Project); and to engage multiple stakeholders to co-design and deliver research that proposes, prioritises and evaluates interventions to strengthen community and health system resilience to EWEs on vulnerable populations living with HIV and/or tuberculosis in Mozambique, South Africa and Zambia (ASTRA Project).
Kingsley holds the Medical Research Foundation (MRF), United Kingdom (Early – Mid Career) grant on the Impact of climate change and health, and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) (UK) grant on Climate change adaptation. He is also a fellow and awardee of the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU) Futures Climate Cohort grant (2023–2024). He is currently working under the mentorship of Professors Collins Iwuji and Janet Seeley as he aspires toward academic independence.
