Health
How Jimmy Osuret Turned Childhood Trauma into Evidence for Safer School Crossings
On a weekday morning in Kampala, the city snarls without any signs of awakening. Cars grind bumper to bumper along crumbling asphalt, their horns locked in a long, impatient argument. Rusting taxis and private vehicles shudder under the rising sun. Boda bodas slice through impossibly narrow gaps, mount pavements, edge past crossings, and assert dominance wherever there is room to move. The road belongs to whoever is bold enough to seize it.
And on the margins of this contest, there are children.
At 6 a.m., long before office doors open, primary school pupils begin their walk. Backpacks bounce against narrow shoulders as they navigate broken sidewalks and dusty road edges. When they reach a main road, their rhythm changes. Some stop and scan, small hands grip the straps. Others hesitate, then dart, misjudging speed, trusting that a driver will slow down.
But traffic rarely slows.
In Kampala, pedestrians do not command the road; they negotiate with it. Every crossing is a calculation. Every pause carries risk. Children learn early that movement requires courage. They watch for gaps, read the body language of drivers, and step forward in faith.
It is in that fragile second, between hesitation and impact, that the question begins to form.
For Jimmy Osuret, this is not an abstract problem of urban mobility but a daily reality, etched into memory long before it became research.
In 1996, as a Primary Four pupil at Shimoni Demonstration School, then located along the busy Nile Avenue corridor in Uganda’s capital, Kampala, he watched a classmate attempt to cross the road on an ordinary school day. A truck did not slow down. The child did not make it to the other side.
“It stayed with me,” Osuret recalls. “At the time, I didn’t have the language for it. But that moment shaped how I came to understand injuries—not as accidents, but as something patterned, preventable, and deeply unfair.”
Nearly three decades later, the school has moved, and the road has changed, but Kampala’s traffic has only grown more unforgiving. Children still gather at pavements across the city, backpacks bouncing, eyes fixed on gaps in traffic that may or may not come. And Osuret would return to these streets, not as a schoolboy navigating danger, but as a public health scientist determined to change what danger looks like for Uganda’s children.
From Personal Loss to Public Health Purpose
Osuret’s journey into injury research unfolded through lived experience, service, and grief, each layer sharpening his understanding of why pedestrian safety matters.
After completing his Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Health at Makerere University, he volunteered with the Uganda Red Cross Society in Bushenyi District between 2009 and 2011. There, he was exposed to emergency response, first aid, and trauma care. Road crashes were no longer statistics but bleeding bodies, panicked families, and systems struggling to respond in time.
“That experience changed how I saw injuries,” he reflects. “They weren’t isolated events. They were predictable outcomes of unsafe systems.”
His MSc in Public Health at Oxford Brookes University deepened that lens. Focusing his dissertation on alcohol-related road traffic injuries, Osuret built strong skills in epidemiology and behavioural research, tools he would later bring back home.
But it was personal loss that cemented his resolve. A cousin was killed in a hit-and-run crash. Another reminder that vulnerability on Uganda’s roads often carries the highest cost.
Together, these experiences shaped the research question that would define his PhD: Why are Kampala’s roads so unsafe for children, and what actually works to protect them?
Kampala’s Roads, Through a Child’s Eyes
Every day, millions of Ugandans walk to school, to work, to markets, to taxi stages. At some point in the day, everyone becomes a pedestrian. For children, walking is not a choice; it is the only option. Yet Kampala’s roads tell children they do not belong.
Rapid urbanisation and motorisation have transformed the city, but road design continues to privilege vehicles over people. Sidewalks are missing or obstructed. Safe crossings are rare. Speed control is weak. Children are forced to negotiate fast-moving traffic despite their limited ability to judge speed and distance.
Osuret’s research confirms what many parents already fear. Pedestrians account for more than a third of road casualties in Uganda, with children bearing a disproportionate share of that burden. Unsafe crossing behaviours, running, failing to stop at the pavement, and weaving between vehicles are not acts of carelessness. They are survival strategies in hostile environments.
“Children are expected to behave safely in systems that are fundamentally unsafe,” he explains. “That is not reasonable, and it is not ethical.”
Watching the Road Tell Its Story
Rather than relying on self-reports or simulations, Osuret turned to the road itself. Using discreetly mounted video cameras at school crossings across Kampala, his team observed thousands of real interactions between children, vehicles, and the built environment. The footage captured moments of hesitation, confusion, urgency, and occasionally, near misses that left the researchers gasping for air.
His findings were sobering. One in five children failed to wait at the pavement. More than a quarter crossed outside marked crosswalks. Many ran. Some crossed between vehicles, often when drivers failed to yield.
“These behaviours are not random,” Osuret notes. “They respond directly to what drivers do and what the road allows.”
Crucially, the data revealed something else: where trained school traffic wardens were present, children behaved differently, and drivers did too.
The Power of a Raised Hand
Osuret’s PhD went beyond observation. It tested a solution.
In a cluster-randomized trial across 34 public primary schools, his team introduced a school traffic warden behavioural promotion programme, a low-cost intervention placing trained adult wardens at school crossings during peak hours. The wardens wore reflective gear, used stop paddles, made eye contact with drivers, and guided children through safe crossing routines: stop, look, wait, walk.
Strikingly, drivers were more than seven times more likely to yield to child pedestrians where a traffic warden was present. Children were 70% more likely to cross safely, stopping at the pavement, walking instead of running, and avoiding dangerous gaps between vehicles.
“What surprised me most,” Osuret recalls, “was how quickly children adapted. When the system supported them, safer behaviour became the norm.”
The intervention faced some resistance. Some drivers ignored wardens. Others were openly hostile. These moments revealed a deeper truth that behaviour change cannot rely on goodwill alone. It requires enforcement, legitimacy, and policy backing.
Behaviour Is Not the Problem—Systems Are
A central insight of Osuret’s work is that road safety debates often focus on the wrong actor.
“Children are told to be careful,” he says. “But children are not the ones designing roads, setting speed limits, or enforcing laws.”
His research shows that driver behaviour, especially yielding and speed, has a direct protective effect on children. Higher driver-yielding rates are consistently associated with fewer pedestrian collisions. Behaviour change among drivers is therefore not optional but foundational.
This perspective aligns with the Safe Systems Approach, which recognises human error as inevitable and places responsibility on systems to prevent fatal outcomes. In Kampala, where infrastructure and enforcement gaps are stark, behavioural interventions like traffic wardens offer an immediate, scalable bridge, especially in school zones.
Scholarship Grounded in Community
Osuret’s academic home at Makerere University School of Public Health shaped how his research evolved. Mentorship from senior injury researchers at Makerere University grounded his work in rigorous methods and local relevance.
“I worked closely with Dr. Olive Kobusingye at the Trauma, Injury, and Disability Unit and became involved in research on pedestrian road safety through international collaborations. Makerere taught me to ask questions that matter here,” he says. “Not just what is publishable, but what is usable.”
That grounding helped him navigate the most challenging phase of his PhD, especially balancing full-time academic work, research, and personal responsibilities. Like many African scholars, he conducted much of his doctoral research while teaching, mentoring, and engaging communities.
“It made me deeply aware of the structural barriers young researchers face,” he reflects. “And it strengthened my commitment to mentorship.”
From Evidence to Action
On January 10, 2025, Osuret publicly defended his PhD in a hybrid session at the Makerere University School of Public Health Auditorium. The defense was both a scholarly milestone and a personal reckoning, a moment when decades of memory, loss, and inquiry converged.
But for Osuret, the PhD was never an endpoint.
Today, he serves on the National Road Safety Committee, contributing evidence to Uganda’s National Road Safety Action Plan. He mentors students, collaborates with policymakers, and continues to argue, persistently, that injuries deserve the same public health urgency as infectious diseases.
“The gap is not knowledge,” he says. “We know what works. The gap is translating evidence into action.”
If policymakers took just one lesson from his research, “design roads around children, not vehicles,” he says. Osuret believes that speed management, safe crossings, and visible enforcement around schools are essential obligations, not luxuries.
Walking Toward Safer Futures
As the country prepares for the 76th Makerere University Graduation Ceremony this February 2026, where Osuret and 184 others will receive their PhDs, we are reminded of what scholarship can do when it remains rooted in lived reality.
Every day, children still gather on the road pavements outside schools like Shimoni. Traffic still hums, and risk has not disappeared. But in some places, a raised hand, a reflective vest, and a trained presence have shifted the balance, if only slightly, toward safety.
When asked what responsibility he now carries, Osuret does not hesitate.
“To ensure that evidence informs decisions,” he says. “Because at some point in the day, we are all pedestrians. And no one should have to gamble with their life just to cross the road.”
—A publication of the Makerere University School of Public Health Communications Office, Graduation Profiles Series, 76th Graduation Ceremony
KAMPALA, 25 February 2026 — Higher education must move beyond awarding degrees to producing solutions for national and global crises, speakers said on Wednesday as Makerere University continued its 76th Graduation Ceremony, positioning universities as central actors in strengthening Africa’s public health capacity.
Addressing graduands on Wednesday, February 25, 2026, at Freedom Square, national leaders and university officials framed graduation not as a ceremonial endpoint but as an investment in workforce readiness, research leadership, and evidence-driven governance, particularly at a time when health systems across the continent face growing pressure from pandemics, demographic change, and climate-related risks.
The message resonated strongly through presentations from Makerere University School of Public Health (MakSPH) and Makerere University College of Health Sciences (MakCHS), whose graduates enter professional service amid renewed global attention to health system resilience, scientific leadership, and locally generated research.
Delivering the commencement address on Day Two of Makerere University’s 76th Graduation Ceremony, Dr. Margaret Blick Kigozi, Board Chairperson of the Makerere University Endowment Fund, reflected on her graduation in 1976 during a period of national uncertainty under then-Chancellor President Idi Amin. She recalled leaving Uganda soon after with her young family, carrying “little more than education, values, and hope,” an experience she used to frame lessons on resilience, purpose, and responsibility in uncertain times.
Challenging graduates to rethink professional success, she reminded those entering health and life sciences that their training carries extraordinary influence.
“Power does not make you important; it makes you responsible,” she said. “You will decide who is listened to and who is dismissed, who waits and who is rushed through, who feels safe and who feels small. Your education has trained you to ask better questions, but your humanity must guide the answers. Behind every chart, every case, every experiment, there is life, and life deserves care, patience, and dignity.”
Throughout the ceremony, speakers returned to a common refrain: societies increasingly depend on evidence, and universities must produce professionals capable of translating knowledge into policy, practice, and community impact.
Across the four-day congregation, the University will award 9,295 degrees and diplomas, including 2,503 Master’s degrees, 6,343 Bachelor’s degrees, 206 Postgraduate Diplomas, and 30 Diplomas. But beyond the numbers, speakers repeatedly returned to a central question on how higher education can translate academic growth into national development and health security.
On day two, graduands were presented from the College of Natural Sciences, the College of Veterinary Medicine, Animal Resources and Biosecurity, the College of Health Sciences, and the MakSPH, the latter positioned squarely within Africa’s ongoing struggle to expand its pool of trained epidemiologists, health systems researchers, and policy leaders.
Vice Chancellor Prof. Barnabas Nawangwe noted that Africa averages just 80 researchers per million people, compared to a global average of 1,081, warning that the human resource gap remains substantial.
“Today the School of Public Health presents graduands joining the field at a time when Africa faces a critical shortage of highly trained public health leaders,” he said.
The School of Public Health presented seven PhD candidates: Aber Harriet Odonga, Komakech Henry, Lubogo David, Nakisita Olivia, Namukose Samalie, Ntaro Moses, and Osuret Jimmy. It also graduated 195 Master’s students and 29 Bachelor of Environmental Health Science graduates, including four first-class honours recipients led by Phillip Acaye with a CGPA of 4.63.
Their research spans maternal and child health, epidemic preparedness, sanitation behaviour change, nutrition systems integration, and injury prevention, areas increasingly recognised as foundational to national development rather than peripheral health concerns.
University Chancellor Dr. Crispus Kiyonga emphasized that research must move beyond academic publication into policy and implementation.
“Research plays a very vital role in the development of any community,” he said, linking university scholarship directly to Uganda’s national development agenda.
For public health education, that responsibility carries particular urgency. The COVID-19 pandemic, recurring disease outbreaks, and climate-linked health risks have exposed how deeply national stability depends on scientific capacity.
The chancellor hailed the Government of Uganda for committing UGX 30 billion through the Makerere University Research and Innovations Fund (MakRIF).
Mak Urged on More PhDs
Representing the First Lady and Minister of Education and Sports, State Minister Dr. Joyce Kaducu Moriku described doctoral training as central to Uganda’s research ambitions, noting government efforts to expand funding and modernize higher education systems.
“Universities must produce more PhDs to strengthen the national research agenda,” she said, adding that competence-based reforms aim to align training more closely with societal needs.
“More PhDs also mean the university is growing in academic leadership and an increase in research. So, keep the numbers growing, especially in Science, Technology, and Engineering,” she added.
The 213 PhDs conferred this year, a record, signal more than institutional expansion but a response to structural deficits.
Africa bears approximately 25% of the global disease burden but produces a disproportionately small share of global health research. The continent’s research density remains far below global averages. In this context, each doctoral graduate becomes not merely an academic achievement but a strategic asset.
A University Responding to Its Moment
For the School of Public Health, the graduation reflects a broader evolution in how public health training is conceived. Rather than focusing solely on the treatment of disease, the field increasingly addresses systems, sanitation, nutrition, behavioural change, surveillance, prevention, and climate change, areas where research directly shapes everyday life.
Recent MakSPH-led initiatives, including national HIV impact surveys and digital health system expansion, demonstrate how academic institutions increasingly function as implementation partners to the government rather than observers.
Over the past five years, MakSPH has supported the national scale-up of electronic medical records through the CDC-funded Monitoring and Evaluation Technical Support (MakSPH-METs) programme, and led the Third Uganda Population-Based HIV Impact Assessment (UPHIA 2024–2025), the first fully Ugandan-implemented national survey of its kind.
Launched in 2020, the METs program has supported the nationwide scale-up of UgandaEMR+, transitioning thousands of facilities to secure electronic medical records and deploying critical ICT infrastructure. In March 2026, these systems will be formally transitioned to the Ministry of Health, reflecting sustainable national ownership.
KAMPALA—Three faculty members from Makerere University School of Public Health (MakSPH) have been recognised at the Makerere University Vice-Chancellor’s Research Excellence Awards 2026, highlighting the School’s expanding contribution to research leadership, scientific productivity, and policy-relevant scholarship across Africa.
Associate Professor Peter Kyobe Waiswa, Associate Professor David Musoke, and Juliana Namutundu received honours during the University’s 76th Graduation Ceremony at Freedom Square, where Makerere celebrated scholars whose work has demonstrated exceptional research achievement and impact beyond academia.
The annual awards, coordinated by the Directorate of Research, Innovation and Partnerships (DRIP), recognise faculty and staff whose scholarly output and leadership advance Makerere University’s ambition to become a research-led institution.
“This recognition celebrates sustained excellence in research productivity and contributions to knowledge that advance both national and global discourse,” Vice-Chancellor Prof. Barnabas Nawangwe said. “We are strengthening a culture where research does not remain confined to journals but translates into solutions for society.”
Among the university’s top researchers was Assoc. Prof. Peter Kyobe Waiswa, a health systems scientist whose work focuses on maternal, newborn, and child health. Waiswa ranked among Makerere’s overall top researchers after publishing 43 peer-reviewed papers in 2025, tying with three-time award winner Prof. Moses Kamya of the School of Medicine in the College of Health Sciences.
His research examines how health systems function at their most fragile moments, including childbirth, early life, and community-level care, addressing questions of equity, service delivery, and health system performance across Africa.
Also recognised was Dr. David Musoke, an Associate Professor of Disease Control, whose 25 publications earned distinction among senior career researchers. His work spans environmental health, community health systems, and implementation research, areas increasingly viewed as critical to preventing disease before it reaches hospitals.
In the early-career category, Juliana Namutundu received recognition for emerging research leadership, reflecting Makerere’s effort to nurture the next generation of African scholars.
Together, the awards underscored MakSPH’s growing influence within Makerere’s research ecosystem, particularly in fields linking science directly to population wellbeing.
The Research Excellence Awards were established to encourage publication in high-impact journals while reinforcing Makerere’s ambition to become a globally competitive research university. Nominations are reviewed by the Board of Research and Graduate Training, chaired by Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic Affairs) Prof. Sarah Ssali.
Awardees were honoured during a graduation luncheon organised by the Makerere University Convocation, the institution’s alumni and staff association, which described the event as a celebration of “excellence and inspiring impact.”
The ceremony also recognised forms of scholarship extending beyond traditional academic publishing.
Dr. Geofrey Musinguzi, a research associate at the School of Public Health, was honoured for his book My Journey with Rectal Cancer, an account of diagnosis, treatment, and recovery that blends personal testimony with public health advocacy.
Diagnosed at age 44 while a visiting scholar at the University of Antwerp in Belgium, Musinguzi sought medical care after experiencing persistent symptoms, including rectal bleeding and back pain. His treatment involved surgeries, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and a year living with a colostomy bag.
Rather than keeping the experience private, he documented it publicly to challenge cancer stigma and encourage early screening. The book, launched at the School of Public Health in August 2024, highlights how lived experience can shape public health awareness alongside scientific research.
The recognition reflects a broader understanding of research impact, one that includes scholarship capable of influencing behaviour as well as policy.
Makerere’s emphasis on research excellence comes as African universities face increasing pressure to produce locally grounded evidence while competing globally for visibility and funding. For MakSPH, whose work spans disease surveillance, environmental health, and health systems research, publication output increasingly serves as both academic currency and development infrastructure.
“These awards are part of our broader effort to position Makerere as a truly research-led institution,” Nawangwe said, adding that scholarship must remain aligned with national and regional priorities.
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