Dr Francois van Loggerenberg

Profile

Dr van Loggerenberg, is a Charted Psychologist and Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society, and a Research Fellow in the Youth Resilience Unit. He was the manager of an NIHR-funded Global Health Group on developing psycho-social interventions in low- and middle-income countries. The Group explored three specific resource-oriented approaches: DIALOG+, Family involvement and Volunteer support, that were refined and adapted to the local context. He trained as a research psychologist in South Africa and has a PhD in Public Health Medicine from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, investigating behavioural interventions to enhance adherence to antiretroviral therapy in Durban, South Africa. Since 1997 he has lectured in various capacities at the post-graduate level, mostly in Psychology, Criminology, and Statistics and Research Methods. He was in Oxford from 2012 to 2109, initially as Scientific Lead on the Global Health Network. In that position he was involved in methodology research, for example, supervising work on a project to assess the role of twitter, in the African Ebola outbreak. He was also co-investigator in a Stanford-Oxford Li Ka Shing foundation-funded study assessing the usefulness of machine data from point-of-care diagnostic machines in Africa. Subsequently he was a Trial Manager in the Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, on a trial to test an intervention to address perinatal depression in HIV positive mothers in rural South Africa. He is a Teaching Fellow in the Centre for Tropical Medicine and Global Health, University of Oxford. At Queen Mary he was most recently Principal Investigator on a study (2022-2023) to adapt and test the DIALOG+ intervention in school children in Colombia, post-conflict and in the light of the challenges of COVID-19. He currently works on a large cohort of primary school children in east London looking at better understanding the development of emotional resilience.

Research

Research Interests:

Mental health, child and adolescent mental health, HIV and mental health

Publications

Roach, A, Stanislaus Sureshkumar, D, Elliot, k, Hidalgo-Padilla, L, van Loggerenberg, F, Hounsell, L, Jakaite, Z, Esnal, F, Donaghy, J, Bird, V, Priebe, S. One-year recovery rates for young people with depression and/or anxiety not receiving treatment: A meta-analysis and systematic review. BMJ Open 2023;13:e072093. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2023-072093.

Carlos Gómez-Restrepo, María José Sarmiento-Suárez, Magda Alba-Saavedra, María Gabriela Calvo-Valderrama, Carlos Javier Rincón-Rodríguez, Lina María González-Ballesteros, Victoria Bird, Stefan Priebe, and Francois van Loggerenberg. Mental health problems and resilience in adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic in a post-armed conflict area in Colombia. Scientific Reports (2023) 13:9743. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-35789-y 

Gómez-Restrepo, C, José Sarmiento-Suárez, M, Alba-Saavedra, M, Gabriela Calvo-Valderrama, M, Javier Rincón-Rodríguez, C, Bird, VJ, Priebe, S, van Loggerenberg, F. DIALOG+S, a tool to support mental well-being and resilience in a school setting: A cluster randomized exploratory study in a post-conflict area. JMIR Formative Research, 2023 ;7:e46757, doi: 10.2196/46757

Francois van Loggerenberg, Alison D. Grant, Kogieleum Naidoo, Marita Murrman, Santhanalakshmi Gengiah, Tanuja Gengiah, Katherine Fielding, Salim S. Abdool Karim. (2015) Individualised motivational counselling to enhance adherence to antiretroviral therapy is not superior to didactic counselling in South African patients: Findings of the CAPRISA 058 randomised controlled trial. AIDS and Behavior, Volume 19, Issue 1, 145-156, DOI 10.1007/s10461-014-0763-6.

van Loggerenberg, F., McGrath, M., Akena, D. et al.Feasibility, experiences and outcomes of using DIALOG+ in primary care to improve quality of life and mental distress of patients with chronic conditions: an exploratory non-controlled trial in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Colombia and Uganda. Pilot and Feasibility Studies, 7, 180 (2021).