Charity Aienobe-Asekharen is working with Dr Hibbah Osei-Kwasi as a Research Associate in the HOPE4NCDs project to harness positive deviance in diet and physical activity behaviours within African and Caribbean communities.
Charity has over five years of experience in the academic and nonprofit sector as a researcher, health promoter, & project facilitator. She has an MPH degree in Health Promotion & Education from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria.
Charity is a 2020 Commonwealth PhD Scholarship Awardee and is studying for a doctorate degree in Public Health and Health Promotion Research at Brunel University of London. Her doctoral research is focused on using a participatory methodology to co-design with in-school young people in Nigeria for tobacco smoking prevention through health communication. Charity is a tobacco control advocate and is the first woman from Nigeria to win the World Health Organization World No Tobacco Day Award (WHO WNTD) in 2018. She won the Brunel University Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition in 2022 and 2023 for the people’s choice prize and first prize respectively. At Brunel University, she worked as a postgraduate mentor and as a Student Quality Advisor (SQA) providing critical feedback to facilitate excellent student experience with university courses.
Charity is a researcher with a deep commitment to public health and health promotion. Her research focuses on using participatory methodologies to involve vulnerable groups and ethnic communities in research and intervention design and development.
She conducted the first scoping review in Africa which highlighted the lack of participation in intervention design by young people in tobacco control.
Charity's PhD focused on using a four-phase co-design process to involve young people in designing health communication campaign and materials (animation and posters) for tobacco use prevention. This included the use of participatory tools like problem trees and road maps. She also engaged the use of creative methods like drawing and diaries including the use of elicitation interviews with eighty-nine participants from public and private schools in southern Nigeria.
Charity currently works with Dr Hibbah Osei-Kwasi on the 'Harnessing Opportunities for Promoting Equity in Non-Communicable Diseases' (HOPE4NCDs) project, conducting research with the goal of reducing health inequalities and improving health outcomes in African and Caribbean communities which face significant health challenges, including higher rates of early-onset obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.
Charity is a Co-Chair of the Global Research Network, Education Subcommittee in the Society for Research on Nicotine & Tobacco (SRNT). She serves as peer reviewer for several journals including BMJ Tobacco Control; Health Psychology and Behavioral Medicine; Journal of Public Health and Community Medicine; and Substance Use and Addiction Journal.
Charity also serves as the head of hospitality department of The Covenant Nation UK (CNUK). CNUK is a multicultural community-based faith organisation dedicated to building families and individuals who are leaders in various fields by operating the biblical principles of love.
Featured publications
Aienobe-Asekharen, C., Norris, E., & Martin, W. (2024). A Scoping Review of Tobacco Control Health Communication in Africa: Moving towards Involving Young People. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 21(3), 259. DOI: 10.3390/ijerph21030259