Isabelle Uny (PhD) – Board Member

Dr Isabelle Uny is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Social Marketing and Health. Isa is a social scientist and an experienced qualitative researcher with a PhD in Global Health and Development. Her research focuses on alcohol harm prevention and particularly evaluations of alcohol policy formulation and implementation mainly in Global South contexts (Latin American and Africa). She recently led a retrospective case study of the alcohol sachets bans in Uganda and Malawi and co-led another study which explored how policymakers , civil society organisations and health organizations in Peru and Brazil view alcohol consumption, harms and possible regulations and what action they may support to improve alcohol control policies.
 
Isa’s research with Global South partners uses a ‘decolonised’ approach and focuses on co-design, equal partnerships and community engagement. A large part of her work is focused on research capacity strengthening and multidirectional learning between global North and Global South. Isa has been a Mentor on the WHO scientific research and writing mentorship initiative towards diversity in research on alcohol control policies. Though her interest is mainly in harms and alcohol policy, her research in tobacco is focused on the use and marketing of cigarettes to adolescents in Latin America ( namely Mexico, Guatemala, Argentina and Peru) and she has undertaken research on second hand smoke and smoke free homes in Indonesia and Malaysia, as well as some tobacco-related research in the UK (e.g around smoking in pregnancy).
 
Isa was appointed to the ICARA board in 2021.