Victor Femi-Lawal

Victor Femi-Lawal is a fifth-year medical student, global health researcher, and health advocate dedicated to advancing health outcomes through research, innovation, and impactful interventions. He has led and contributed to numerous high-impact studies, policy statements and initiatives across Africa and globally. As a Project Editor at Polygeia Cambridge, he led a multinational team to conduct research on adolescent sexual health in Nigeria, presenting findings at the RSTMH West Africa Regional Meeting at Nigeria’s Institute of Medical Research, Lagos.

Victor is Associate Director of Research at AFAC, with publications in prestigious journals like the JTCVS, and his work has been presented at the 105th American Association of Thoracic Surgeons (AATS) Annual Meeting, the world’s most prestigious conference on cardiothoracic surgery. He has also presented research at the 25th International AIDS Conference in Germany, the Cochrane Africa Indaba in Nairobi, the Pan-African Organization for Health Education and Research Symposium in Lusaka, Zambia, among others.

As Director of Research and Policy at The Mafita Initiative, he works with a team of innovative young people to design, implement, and evaluate evidence-based social interventions. Insights from their work have been presented at the Duke Global Mental Health Conference in North Carolina. He also serves as a Medical Education Fellow with Osmosis from Elsevier, contributing to innovations in medical education.

As Vice President of the Federation of African Medical Students’ Associations (FAMSA), he established the organization's Technical Working Group on Digital Health and Innovation, leading AfroHack ’24 to drive healthcare innovation and generate five innovative product ideas for addressing chronic diseases, sexual and reproductive health, and infectious disease outbreaks. His digital health work and youth leadership earned invitations from the Africa CDC and GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit) to co-design the Africa Youth in Digital Health Network in Kigali, Rwanda.

Victor has over a dozen publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals, including The Lancet, and has peer-reviewed for multiple prestigious journals, including the Journal of Public Health in Africa, flagship journal of the Africa CDC. He is passionate about youth capacity-building in research and innovation, having trained and mentored over 500 students and early-career researchers within and outside Africa.

Victor is a student member of the Royal Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (RSTMH) and other prestigious societies dedicated to advancing global health. Recently, he received an award from the Vice Chancellor of the University of Ibadan as the most outstanding student in research and innovation out of 35,000+ students, acknowledging his impact.

Passionate about advancing digital health capacity through evidence-based initiatives, he serves as a Research Lead in the Research and Knowledge Sharing Thematic Working Group of the Africa CDC Youth in Digital Health Network (YiDHN). He remains committed to advancing research and evidence-generation in global health, digital health, sexual and reproductive health, and non-communicable diseases.