Dr. Lola Kola is a Global Mental health researcher and a female Medical Sociologist at the Department of Psychiatry, College of Medicine, University of Ibadan in Nigeria, an affiliate member of the University of Washington’s BRiTE center and an Adjunct Associate Professor at Department of Sociology and Psychology, Lead City University, Ibadan. She has significant experience in the conduct of large scale epidemiological studies, clinical trials and implementation studies in perinatal mental health and other vulnerable populations in primary care in low resource settings. Lola’s current work is centered around developing psychosocial interventions on digital platforms to increase mental health services access. She have served as technical staff at the World Health Organisation (WHO) between 2011-2014, where she coordinated the adaptation and implementation of the WHO Mental Health Gap Action (mhGAP) demonstration project in Nigeria (funded by the European Union). Lola have studied several technology integrated approaches of the WHO mhGAP perinatal depression care in Maternal and Child Health Care in Nigeria such as tele-consultation strategies, digital-supervision and support to improve quality of mhGAP depression care, and implementation at the provider level. At the patient-level, she has also developed and tested a self-management patient-centered mobile App for adolescents with depression to manage their symptom and infant care in Maternal and Child Health setting. She has also successfully integrated digital health in the mobile App intervention to provide timely follow-up. The Hybrid approach (mobile App + distance follow-up) of integrated depression care has show significant impacts of effectiveness of mental and physical health outcomes in adolescent mothers in Nigeria. Lola has contributed significancy to Global Health discourse on Mental Health and the COVID-19 pandemic and its implication on vulnerable population in LMIC
