Dr Carrie Brooke-Sumner is a Senior Scientist in the Mental Health, Alcohol, Substance Use and Tobacco Research Unit of the South African Medical Research Council.

She holds a BSc Honours Degree in Biochemistry and Microbiology from Rhodes University. She completed a Master’s degree in Public Health (specialising in Health Promotion) at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 2007, and on returning to South Africa worked as a consultant for a variety of NGOs in the disaster response, HIV prevention and youth development sectors (including the Soul City Foundation, Medecins Sans Frontieres, World AIDS Campaign).

She has extensive expertise in developing training programmes for community workers and peer educators and in delivering interventions for community based health promotion. In 2012 she joined the Programme for Improving Mental Health (PRIME) consortium as a PhD candidate. Her PhD in Psychology from UKZN focused on developing, piloting and evaluating a community-based psychosocial rehabilitation programme for people with severe mental health conditions.

She is Co-PI on the PRIZE study (Psychosocial rehabilitation and peer support for people with psychosis in South Africa: a pilot randomised trial) and on the SAMRC Flagship study Ntombivimbela+, which is developing and evaluating a sexual violence prevention and mental health intervention for heterosexual, lesbian and bisexual women in South African higher education institutions.