Karen Yeates

Karen Yeates is a physician, nephrologist and global-health researcher whose career has centred on a practical question: how can evidence-based care work in places where geography, workforce constraints, infrastructure and unequal access reshape what is possible? As a Professor in the Department of Medicine at Queen’s University, her research spans kidney health, noncommunicable diseases, women’s health, cancer prevention, digital health, implementation science, population health and health equity.

Her long-standing work in Tanzania has connected clinical questions with implementation and health-system design. In cervical-cancer prevention, this has included research on HPV-based screening, smartphone-supported visual assessment, self-sampling, community participation, health-worker training, quality assurance, referral, treatment and patient navigation. The emphasis is not simply on whether a screening technology can work, but on whether women can move through the entire prevention pathway and whether local services can sustain that pathway at scale.

Karen’s wider scholarship extends from kidney-care access, dialysis and chronic-disease management to hypertension, cardiovascular risk, household and environmental exposures, and large multinational population research through PURE and related collaborations. In Canada, her work has also addressed rural, remote and Indigenous health equity, including questions of access, culturally responsive care and cervical-cancer prevention.

Within WEMA Global Health, Karen contributes across WEMA Inc., WEMA Health Innovation Tanzania and GHIRL. Her role combines scientific leadership with mentorship, partnership development and the creation of research environments in which students, clinicians, programme teams and collaborators can move from an important question to rigorous evidence and, where appropriate, to implementation.