Biography
Duncan Shikuku is a Technical Specialist in midwifery with the United Nations Population Fund in New York. He holds a PhD in Global Health from Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM), Master of Science in Midwifery & Women’s Health from Makerere University, and Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Moi University, and he is also a UK Associate Fellow of Higher Education Academy. He has over 10 years’ experience in successful designing, implementing and evaluating effectiveness of multi-donor-funded in-service maternal, newborn and child health and pre-service midwifery education programmes in low-resource settings.
Currently, he supports technical implementation of midwifery and maternal, newborn and child health programmes, co-ordinates and implements priority research and innovation strategies, contributes to advocacy and knowledge sharing on best practices to strengthen midwifery programme implementation, and contributes to strategic global collaborations and partnerships in development of global maternal, newborn and child health/midwifery guidelines/standards and technical resources.
Previously Duncan worked with LSTM and Save the Children International in Kenya maternal, newborn and child health programmes at national and sub-national level providing technical guidance to the Ministry of Health. He supported on high-impact sustainable programming, pre-service and in-service midwifery education and training including curriculum reviews and implementation and evaluating their effectiveness at educator and student level, emergency obstetrics and newborn care, and maternal and perinatal deaths surveillance and response.
Duncan has published on midwifery and maternal, newborn and child health and contributes as a scholarly peer reviewer with top global journals.
Research interests
Duncan’s main research interests are global maternal, newborn and child health and midwifery issues including testing the feasibility and effectiveness of high-impact interventions for scale using robust experimental designs and mixed methods research designs.
Selected research publications
National continuous professional development programmes for midwifery educators and their effectiveness in low-and-middle-income-countries: a systematic review – Journal: BMC Medical Education – Published: 25th September 2025
An evaluation of the effectiveness of an updated pre-service midwifery curriculum integrated with emergency obstetric and newborn care in Kenya: a cluster randomised controlled trial – Journal: BMC Medical Education – Published: 31st December 2024
Experiences, barriers and perspectives of midwifery educators, mentors and students implementing the updated emergency obstetric and newborn care-enhanced pre-service midwifery curriculum in Kenya: a nested qualitative study – Journal: BMC Medical Education – Published: 31st August 2024
The effect of emergency obstetric and newborn care training interventions on knowledge and skills of midwifery students prior to graduation in Kenya: A quasi-experimental study using a non-randomised controlled study design – Journal: International Journal of Africa Nursing Sciences – Published: 1st June 2024
Evaluation of the feasibility of a midwifery educator continuous professional development (CPD) programme in Kenya and Nigeria: a mixed methods study – Journal: BMC Medical Education – Published: 14th May 2024
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