Natsayi Chimbindi

Natsayi Chimbindi is a faculty member and Wellcome Trust International Training Fellow at the Africa Health Research Institute (AHRI), Durban, South Africa. She is also an Honorary Associate Professor at the Institute for Global Health (IGH) at University College London (UCL), UK and an Honorary Lecturer in the School of Medicine at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa.

Her research focuses on the development and evaluation of complex HIV prevention and sexual health interventions for adolescents and young people, particularly school-based programmes. She is interested in co-developing and evaluating theoretically informed interventions that improve the delivery of sexual health and HIV prevention services in schools.

Chimbindi is a Fellow of the HIV, Infectious Disease and Global Health Implementation Research Institute (HIGH IRI), sponsored by the Center for Dissemination and Implementation at the Institute for Public Health at Washington University in St Louis, USA. Through this fellowship, she is developing expertise in dissemination and implementation research and contributes to the Afri-HIGH IRI hub.

During her post-doctoral training, she served as a research programme manager for the AHRI HIV Prevention Programme, where she led mixed-methods evaluations and clinical trials of HIV prevention interventions among young people. These included trials evaluating the distribution of HIV self-testing kits and linkage to care, as well as a pilot trial exploring peer-led delivery of antiretroviral-based HIV prevention and care for adolescents and young adults in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.