Lydia Drumright
Lydia Drumright is a Lecturer within the Centre for Infection Prevention and Management. She holds a PhD in Epidemiology and Public Health and an MPH in Health Education. Lydia contributes to CIPM and the work-streams through her experience and expertise in classical epidemiology, behavioural assessment, qualitative questionnaire development, partner- and network-level data collection, behavioural health interventions, statistical analysis and sampling methods.
Contact
Phone: 020 8383 2730
Office: Room 8N.12, Department of Infectious Diseases and Immunity, 8th Floor Commonwealth Building, Hammersmith Campus
See personal webpage by clicking here
Lydia's main research interests include i) incorporating and analysing multiple types of data to understand disease transmission and develop robust interventions; ii) elucidating the role of social/structural networks in disease transmission and harnessing these networks for prevention; iii) examining dynamics in human dyads to identify disease transmission pathways and develop prevention methods; iv) developing an in-depth understanding of factors influencing risk taking and identifying key areas of intervention; v) developing robust methods for collecting and analysing data on behaviours and social structure. She supports existing research within work-stream 1, Embedding Infection Prevention: Behavioural Change”, and is devising her own research programme within the Centre.
Lydia also supports work-stream 4, capacity building and education. She delivers teaching in epidemiology and basic statistics on a number of courses and is involved in developing our latest MSc in Infection Prevention.
Background
After receiving her BSc in Biochemistry and Cellular Biology from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and spending a number of years as a bench scientist in infectious diseases and human genetics, Lydia pursued advanced studies in Public Health. She received significant training in health education; community needs assessment; development, implementation, and evaluation of behavioural interventions; and management during her MPH at California State University Northridge. Following her MPH, Lydia received her PhD in Epidemiology through the UCSD School of Medicine and San Diego State University Graduate School of Public Health, during which time she conducted research in sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and HIV. Her work focused on partnership dynamics in disease transmission, factors influencing risk taking and onward transmission of disease, and examining sexual networks in HIV and STI transmission. During her postdoctoral fellowship at UCSD in the Division of International Health, Lydia expanded on her research by studying hepatitis C virus transmission and prevention, focusing on combining geographic and molecular data with behavioural data to develop methods of examining sexual transmission networks, and developing methods for more accurate behavioural data collection. In 2009, Lydia took a short-term post at the Health Protection Agency in London, where her work focused on tuberculosis. Lydia joined the Imperial faculty in CIPM in May 2010 and has been applying skills and methods that she utilised in STI, HIV, and HCV research to prevention of healthcare acquired infections and community health.
In addition to her research, Lydia has had significant experience in course development and teaching formal courses in Sexually Transmitted Diseases (undergraduate), Emerging Infectious Disease (medical students), Program Evaluation and Measurement (undergraduate) and Statistics (masters students), and supervision of field research students. Lydia looks forward to teaching in CIPM through supervisions, providing lectures to MSc students and participating in the development of new courses and degree granting programs.
