Minerva Kyei-Nimakoh

Dr Minerva Kyei-Nimakoh is a Research Fellow based at the Department of General Practice and Primary Care, the University of Melbourne. She co-Chairs the Melbourne Research Alliance to End Violence against women and their children (MAEVe).

Minerva is a mixed methods researcher focusing on healthcare services’ identification and response to intimate partner violence, with expertise in designing, and implementing evaluations of domestic and family violence programs in healthcare settings. She managed the SAFE Project Expanded, an initiative using a System Audit Tool to build the evidence base for how health services can effectively implement system change to reduce the burden of ill health for patients and hospital staff who experience domestic and family violence.

Minerva brings an intersectional lens to understanding domestic and family violence with the aim to shed light on experiences, and health care needs of people with different types of backgrounds experiencing family violence, particularly people from migrant and refugee backgrounds. Building on previous work by the team, Minerva is part of the iCOPE Project which aims to embed and evaluate a domestic and family violence specific digital infrastructure package for screening at antenatal appointments in English and multiple non-English languages. Originally from Ghana, Minerva has lived experience of migration and resettlement in Australia and is leading a research program examining the impact and experience of family violence in African Australian communities.

Across a number of projects, the principal focus of her work is to increase the capacity of healthcare workers to support people with experiences of intimate partner violence using evidence-informed practice.

View Minerva’s University of Melbourne Find An Expert profile here.