Maya Kohli-Lynch

I am a paediatrics trainee sub-specialising in community child health, based in Glasgow. I graduated from Medicine at the University of Edinburgh in 2013. During my time in Edinburgh I completed an intercalated degree in International Public Health Policy which sparked my interest in public health research. After the foundation programme in the West of Scotland, I completed the East African Diploma in Tropical Medicine & Hygiene in Tanzania and Uganda, which furthered my interest in research addressing health inequalities, particularly among people with disabilities. To gain research experience I successfully applied for a research fellow post at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, where I worked on projects including estimation of the global burden of disease of Group B Streptococcus, and evaluation of early childhood interventions. Keen to continue my research training and explore detection and intervention for early childhood developmental disability, I obtained an NIHR academic clinical fellowship (ACF) during my first three years of paediatrics training in Severn deanery. During my ACF I worked on a pilot feasibility trial of an early intervention programme for children with developmental disabilities in Uganda.

My clinical and research work has focused on inequalities experienced by people with developmental disabilities, and I am eager to explore how these inequalities develop over the life course. People with intellectual disabilities (ID) die on average 20 years earlier than people without ID and it is estimated between 80-98% of people with intellectual disability experience multimorbidity. Multimorbidity is experienced across the life course in people with ID, at an earlier age than those without ID. My Multimorbidity PhD project will explore the key area of the contribution of early life multimorbidity to health inequalities experienced by adults with intellectual disabilities.

Project: The contribution of early onset multimorbidity to health inequalities experienced by adults with intellectual disabilities. 

Primary Supervisor: Prof Craig Melville (University of Glasgow)

Secondary Supervisors: Dr Joseph Symonds (University of Glasgow)