Ms Amina Ismail

Amina Ismail is a Senior Community Mobiliser at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM), specialising in co-creating community-led approaches to tackling health inequities across the Liverpool City Region. She works in partnership with communities and health systems to develop and implement sustainable solutions that address structural inequalities, with a strong focus on empowerment, advocacy, and co-production.

As a participatory and health systems researcher in LSTM’s Department of International Public Health, Amina draws on her background in education to lead and support multidisciplinary teams in addressing health disparities. She has extensive experience facilitating workshops that strengthen health systems through implementation research frameworks and participatory, qualitative methods. Her approach ensures that both evidence and lived experience inform decision-making, keeping interventions relevant, equitable and sustainable.

Amina has contributed to several UK-based health inequality projects, including Liverpool Vaccine Equity; ReCITE: Building Research by Communities to Address Inequities through Expression; the Health Equity Liverpool Project (HELP); and the Right to Health project; where she has helped drive meaningful change through collaboration and inclusive practice.

Central to her work is the design of Public, Community, Engagement and Involvement (PCIE) approaches that reduce systemic and practical barriers. By fostering trust, building partnerships, and addressing power imbalances, she creates inclusive spaces where community voices are central and solutions emerge through genuine co-production. With deep roots in education and a commitment to social justice, Amina is dedicated to advancing equity in health research and practice.

Amina’s research interests centre on the ways in which public and community involvement and engagement shape power dynamics within health research. She is particularly interested in the role of advocacy in addressing systemic issues in health and in ensuring that communities’ voices are embedded through processes of co-production. Amina is passionate about developing creative, community-led models to improve health and wellbeing. She also employs participatory research methods to ensure that communities are not only participants but active co-producers of research, helping to generate more equitable and impactful outcomes.