Christopher Akiba

Christopher Akiba is an implementation research scientist in the Community Health and Implementation Research Program at RTI. Dr. Akiba has over 10 years of experience designing, evaluating, and translating implementation strategies and interventions in academic and government settings, focused on reducing symptoms of mental health disorders both domestically and internationally. His work includes the use of mixed methods to assess the fidelity of complex, multilevel, multifaceted implementation strategies and mental health interventions. He has experience assessing additional health outcomes, including adolescent STIs and HIV, diabetes, and hypertension in adult populations. He currently leads the mixed-methods fidelity assessments of a complex implementation strategy—the Systems Analysis and Improvement Approach (SAIA)—to improve the uptake of evidence-based interventions offered through syringe service programs throughout the United States.  

Before joining RTI in 2022, Dr. Akiba worked extensively in sub-Saharan Africa. In Zambia, he worked as a research associate at Johns Hopkins University, where he served as the task lead for an NICHD funded trial that evaluated psychosocial counseling interventions in children who were made vulnerable or who were orphaned by the HIV epidemic. In Malawi, Dr. Akiba assisted with oversight of an NIMH-funded trial that assessed the ability of two complex implementation strategies to improve uptake evidence-based depression services within routine chronic disease care.