Remembering Dr Constance Nyamukapa

Tragically, Dr Constance Nyamukapa, a long-time member of the Manicaland Centre for Public Health Research, passed away from a heart attack at her flat in Harare, Zimbabwe, on April 29th, having celebrated her 57th birthday two weeks earlier.  

Connie was born in Marondera, Zimbabwe, to parents who worked mainly as domestic servants, and was brought up and went to school in various locations in Mashonaland East and Manicaland provinces. She attended the School of Social Work in Harare gaining a Diploma and then a bachelor’s degree in social work. From 1994-1995, whilst at CEID in Oxford, Connie worked as a Research Assistant with Simon Gregson, Roy Anderson, Geoff Garnett (also once of DIDE) and colleagues at (what was) the Blair Research Institute (later the name went out of fashion and was changed to [another] NIHR!) on a research project that included collection of population survey data on the early spread and socio-demographic impact of HIV/AIDS. This was the first research study of its kind in Zimbabwe – where the Government, like many others at the time, had been in a state of denial and the infection was hidden and even more stigmatised than it is today – so Connie’s and her fellow research assistants’ work was extremely challenging. However, they managed it with great sensitivity and skill, and the effort paid off. The results on HIV prevalence and mortality levels and patterns tallied with early mathematical model projections and had a pivotal influence in the Zimbabwe Government’s pioneering decision to introduce a new tax (the ‘AIDS Levy’) to raise funds to support HIV/AIDS prevention and impact mitigation efforts.   

Between 1996-1997, Connie worked as a probation officer and then as Deputy Superintendent at Matthew Rusike Children's Home caring for orphaned children. In 1997, she helped to establish the Manicaland General Population Open Cohort HIV Sero-Survey and to start development of the Manicaland Centre for Public Health Research, in the province’s rural district of Mutasa (http://www.manicalandhivproject.org/). In Zimbabwe, the Centre was set up under the newly formed independent not-for-profit Biomedical Research and Training Institute (BRTI); and, at the UK end, in 2000, the research team moved from Oxford back to Imperial College to be part of DIDE. 

Connie has been a key member of the Manicaland Centre team ever since; first as Data Quality Fieldwork Supervisor and then as Fieldwork Manager. In 2000, she applied for and was awarded a Wellcome Trust Research Training Fellowship and successfully completed a Masters in Population and Development at the LSE and a field-based research project on extended family support to safeguard orphans education. Following this, Connie studied for and, in 2008, was awarded a PhD in Social Epidemiology in our department at Imperial supervised by Matthew Jukes from the Partnership for Child Development. In the PhD, Connie set up and ran a multi-round population-based cohort survey of children in which she documented the effects of parental HIV infection and parental loss on children’s education and mental health. She also led the analysis of data on the effects of parental loss on children’s mental health collected in a national survey conducted by UNICEF. Connie published the results from her Masters’ and PhD projects in first author articles in leading international journals including Social Science and Medicine and the American Journal of Public Health. 

Since 2008, Connie has been employed as a Research Associate in DIDE at Imperial whilst serving as Research Operations Director at the Manicaland Centre in Zimbabwe. In this role, she has very effectively overseen and managed all of the Centre's Zimbabwe-based research activities, including six more rounds of the Manicaland Cohort and two large-scale community-randomised control trials of novel HIV control interventions. At the time of her passing, Connie was Principal Investigator for a Gates Foundation-funded study to measure the extent of continuing excess morbidity and mortality in people living with HIV compared to uninfected adults following ART scale-up, and to understand how adherence to overlapping health beliefs and practices (including use of traditional herbs, faith healing and spiritual cures as well as biomedical services) might contribute to this. She was also Joint-PI, with Professor Frank Tanser (Stellenbosch University), on an ongoing large and complex NIH R01-funded trial of a peer network intervention to increase men’s use of HIV self-test kits and clinic-based pre-exposure prophylaxis services. Just a few weeks before her death, Connie was appointed Co-Director of the Manicaland Centre with Louisa Moorhouse.

Over the course of her career at Imperial, Connie supervised, mentored and/or supported and nurtured numerous Undergraduate, Masters and PhD students (Zimbabwean and International). In 2023, she received a Collaborative Research Award in the College Faculty of Medicine's 25th Anniversary Staff Awards.

These are some bald facts. Connie Nyamukapa has been an absolute cornerstone of the research done by the Manicaland Centre since its formation. However, at the same time, she was a totally original and unique character and a truly wonderful, generous and down-to-earth human being – one minute participating in a panel discussion at an international conference; the next minute planting vegetables in the fields for her family.  Connie never married and never had any children of her own; instead, she held together and supported (socially & financially) a vast extended family. She's going to be so terribly missed by so many people.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Constance_Nyamukapa
 A link to video recordings of Connie’s funeral and burial services is available for anyone who would like to see these – Simon Gregson can provide a link if contacted.