Dr Oluwasola Banke-Thomas
After completing her medical degree at the Lagos State University, South-West Nigeria in 2011, Oluwasola Banke-Thomas went on to complete her MSc International Public Health with Distinction at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, United Kingdom, and was awarded the prestigious Ken Newell bursary for the best postgraduate student dissertation in 2015.
Oluwasola has worked across three continents: Africa, Europe and North America. She started out by undertaking her foundation year at Saint Nicholas Hospital in Lagos, Nigeria in 2012. She subsequently led a United Nations Population Fund-supported adolescent/youth-friendly clinic where she implemented novel evidence-based adolescent-friendly interventions leveraging community relationships to achieve improved care utilisation and outcomes for adolescents in an underserved community. After a period of working in clinical research at the South-Western Institute of Research, Arizona State University in the United States, Oluwasola returned to the United Kingdom in 2017 to take up a Senior House Officer role in Elderly Care and Medicine at the Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Trust. Following this, she went on to pursue a career in General Practice. During her training in General Practice, she has contributed to quality improvement projects in secondary and primary care that have led to improvement in patient satisfaction and wait times and improvement in advance-care planning in patients nearing end of life in the community. Currently, Oluwasola is in her final year of training working in a busy practice in the West Midlands.
Reason for applying for the scheme
Oluwasola believes that healthcare is truly for all. She is passionate about ensuring equity in access to quality care for all and has dedicated significant portion of her career either tackling barriers to primary care experienced by vulnerable populations or generating context-specific evidence to drive policy changes in this regard. To realise this goal at a health system level, Oluwasola is a strong proponent for the need to harness the unique capabilities and experiences of clinicians who are at the frontline of health care delivery with tested and evidence-based management and leadership practices that will maximise outcomes.
She views the fellowship as a unique platform that will provide her the opportunity to test and implement strategies aimed at provision of safe, high quality, financially sustainable and culturally sensitive care for an increasingly diverse population of the United Kingdom, working on different projects and leveraging available evidence and best practices while learning first-hand from experts and thought leaders working with the organisations that plan, advise and coordinate healthcare within the National Health Service. The mentorship and capacity development that the fellowship offers will allow her to develop key leadership competencies. Oluwasola is particularly excited about the prospect of being able to garner wider health system learning beyond general practice which will allow her properly explore opportunities for collaboration and partnership within the health sector. The opportunity to be able to lead and champion innovation is one other reason why Oluwasola is particularly enthralled by the fellowship.
