Dr Lola Kola is a medical sociologist and global mental health researcher, and her interest is in the social determinants of mental health in women across the life span. Lola is also affiliated to the WHO Collaborating Centre for Research and Training in Mental Health, Neurosciences and Drug and Alcohol abuse, Department of Psychiatry College of Medicine University of Ibadan, Nigeria.

She has served as a technical staff at the World Health Organisation (WHO), where she coordinated the adaptation and implementation of the WHO Mental Health Gap Action (mhGAP) demonstration project in Nigeria (funded by the European Union). She was a Hub administrator on the Partnership for Mental Health Development in Sub-Saharan Africa, a programme of work that involved institutions in six countries: Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, Kenya, Sierra Leone and Liberia with outstanding researchers from institutions in the US and UK, in partnership with government departments and non-governmental organizations.

She is very familiar with the opportunities and challenges of conducting research in Low and Middle Income settings. Her expertise is in the development of psychosocial interventions on digital platforms. She has spent over a decade managing and investigating mental health treatment approaches in vulnerable groups in large scale clinical trials and implementation studies in primary care in low resource settings.

She has studied several technology integrated approaches of the WHO mental health gap action programme (mhGAP) to improve access to depression care in primary care settings in Nigeria. Specifically, at the provider-level, she studied tele-consultation strategies and digital-supervision and support to improve quality of mhGAP depression care implementation and management of challenging cases.

At the patient-level, she has also developed and tested patient-centered mobile App adolescents with depression for self-managing or depression symptoms and infant care in primary care setting to increase access to care. In her Early Career Award (RAPIDmh) funded by the National Institute of Health, USA She demonstrated the feasibility of integrating a mobile health app within routine primary care for teenage mothers with depression to improve access and for timely follow-up.

She has been principal investigator, and co-investigator in research supported by the National Institute of Health, Medical Research Council, UK, Grand Challenges Canada, and International Development Research Centre Canada. She has contributed to leadership and capacity building activities in global mental health through teaching and supervision of research projects in students from diverse backgrounds. She is an active member of the West Africa Digital Mental Health Alliance, a National Institute of Health funded Investigator Award at the University of Ghana and University of Washington, Seattle.

She is a collaborator on the African Mental Health Research Initiative (2016 – 2022; 2023 - 2027) of which Prof Melanie Abass is the KCL partner. This research is led from the University of Zimbabwe as part of the Science Foundation for Africa 'Developing Excellence in Leadership, Training and Science Initiative', supported by the Wellcome Trust.

Lola was a global mental health scholar of the global mental health programme of the University of Columbia, USA and she completed her doctoral training at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. 

Teaching

Lola is a teacher on the following courses:

• Gender and Mental Health
• Psychosocial interventions in Mental Health
• Perinatal Mental Health