Mohamed A. Yusuf

Mohamed A. Yusuf: Epidemiologist, health data scientist and R developer

I work with public health teams to understand where disease surveillance is missing cases and how many people need vaccination. I use spatial models and write R software to help answer those questions. I’m currently at the World Health Organization’s Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean, working on polio eradication and vaccine-preventable diseases.

Get in touch

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

District-level estimates of death rates in Somalia from 2015 to 2024, combining SMART survey data with a statistical model 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-structures

Estimating how many people of each age live in each 5 km grid cell, using survey data and spatial models where census microdata are missing or out of date.

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

R packages from this work

Automated polio surveillance reporting at WHO AFRO

The R code behind WHO AFRO's weekly polio surveillance bulletin, and the analysis tools I built with the Nigeria National Polio Emergency Operations Centre.

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 for AFP reporting

A way to spot districts where non-polio AFP reporting has fallen, even when they still meet the reporting target. It compares each district with its own history and the national pattern.

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

R packages

I write R packages to clean surveillance data, estimate populations by age and support malaria programme planning. They grew out of problems I kept coming across in my work.

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

Background

I trained in health sciences at the University of Salford, then completed an MSc in Quantitative Methods and a PhD in Epidemiology at Manchester Metropolitan University. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, I worked for the WHO Regional Office for Africa and for AHADI. I joined the WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean in 2026.

Experience

Working together

If you’re working on disease surveillance, population estimates or R software for public health, I’d be glad to hear from you. You’re also welcome to get in touch about teaching or reviewing.