Mohamed A. Yusuf

Mohamed A. Yusuf: Epidemiologist · Health Data Scientist

Infectious disease surveillance, immunisation and applied epidemiological intelligence.

I am an epidemiologist and health data scientist specialising in infectious disease surveillance, immunisation and spatial epidemiology. My work spans epidemiological intelligence, advanced statistical modelling and the development of integrated analytical systems to inform public health strategy, programme planning and response.

I currently work within the Director’s Office of WHO’s Polio Eradication and Vaccine-Preventable Diseases Department in the Eastern Mediterranean Region, supporting regional and country-level priorities in disease surveillance, immunisation and polio eradication.

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Mohamed A. Yusuf balancing barefoot on a slackline in a park

Selected work

Two choropleth maps of Somalia showing estimated crude death rate by district for 2017–19 and 2022–24. — Published figure

Drought-attributable mortality in Somalia

Estimated drought-attributable mortality across Somalia by age and district, using household surveys, statistical models and scenario-based forecasts.

Humanitarian health 2023–2026 2 publications and talks

Age pyramids of estimated population by single year of age for each region of The Gambia. — Package example output

Fine-scale population age estimation

Developed methods and R software to estimate population by single year of age at 5 km resolution, where detailed census data are limited.

Population modelling 2024–2026 2 publications and talks 2 R packages

R packages from this work

Automated polio surveillance reporting

Developed automated R workflows for WHO AFRO's weekly polio surveillance bulletin, integrating data across 47 Member States.

Polio surveillance 2023–2025 1 publication or talk 6 R packages

Three maps of Pakistan districts showing relative non-polio AFP reporting before the 2022 floods, the change during the flood period and the change after it. — Figure from a manuscript under review

Surveillance Performance Index

Developed a method to identify districts reporting fewer non-polio AFP cases than expected, including those meeting established surveillance targets.

Polio surveillance 2025–2026 1 publication or talk 2 R packages

R packages

I develop and contribute to R packages for disease surveillance, population modelling, immunisation, malaria analysis and automated reporting. These tools address recurring analytical needs in applied public health research and programmes.

Selected publications

All publications

2026 Article

Drought-attributable mortality in Somalia, 2015–2024: a retrospective and modelling study

Ouchtar, Y., Ali, D. A., Ahmed, Y. A., Adam, M. H., Dirie, N. I., Warsame, A., Yusuf, M., Grundy, C., Watson, O. J., Checchi, F.

The Lancet Regional Health – Africa, 8: 100072

doi:10.1016/j.lanafr.2026.100072 Open access
2026 Article

AgePopDenom: geostatistical modeling for fine-scale population age-structures

Yusuf, M. A., Alegana, V. A., Nnanatu, C. C., Tatem, A. J.

Journal of Open Source Software, 11(125): 10335

doi:10.21105/joss.10335 Free full text
2022 Article

Associations between childhood and adulthood socioeconomic position and grip strength at age 46 years: findings from the 1970 British Cohort Study

Yusuf, M., Montgomery, G., Hamer, M., McPhee, J., Cooper, R.

BMC Public Health, 22(1): 1427

doi:10.1186/s12889-022-13804-7 Free full text

Working together

I’m open to research collaborations and technical discussions on epidemiological modelling, disease surveillance, public health analytics and open-source software. Feel free to get in touch.