The University of Liverpool’s Global Brain Health Clinical Exchange Platform has announced the winner of its Global Brain Health Changemaker Challenge.
The Changemaker Challenge award recognises individuals or teams from rural or urban areas in low or middle-income countries who have made impactful changes to support people with neurological disorders.
Each submission presented a solution or intervention addressing an issue affecting individuals with neurological disorders in a work-based setting, either a new approach or an improvement to an existing one. Submissions came from a range of fields, including advocacy, clinical care, and education, and were reviewed by a panel of experts.
This year’s winners were a team from Cameroon, Dr Mundih Njohjam, Ebsiy Nongse, and Swirri Nji, who designed a peer-led awareness initiative by training 25 young people to deliver neurological sessions in schools. Their aim was to promote brain health, raise awareness, destigmatise brain-related disorders, and encourage early detection and treatment.
The sessions featured brain models to help demystify common misconceptions about neurological disorders within the community. The team reached over 10,000 students across more than 200 schools, conducted street sensitisation sessions and raised awareness via social media.
The award for first prize included registration and $800 USD towards travel and accommodation expenses for the Liverpool Neurological Diseases course (NeuroID), which Dr Mundih Njohjam attended in June.
NeuroID is an approved two-day CPD course aimed at clinicians working in adult and paediatric neurology, infectious diseases, acute medicine, emergency medicine and medical microbiology who want to update their knowledge and improve their skills.
Dr Njohjam said: “As a trainee neurologist with a profound interest in neurological infectious disease, attending the neurological infectious diseases course in Liverpool was not just a career-enriching experience but, most importantly, it has been a major boost to my clinical practice. Despite a high burden of neuroinfectious diseases in my local practice, opportunities for further training on neurological infectious diseases are rare. My participation in this course was not just an addition to my professional profile but also an incentive to the health facility where I currently work and those I will work with in the future.”