SR Funded Project 2024/25: PPIE on Community-based Rehabilitation in Nigeria

In this blog series, we will be featuring projects that have received funding from the Faculty’s Social Responsibility Funding Call. The fund supports projects and initiatives aligned with the Faculty’s five Social Responsibility (SR) and Civic Engagement priorities: Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI), Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE), Local and Global Health Challenges (GH), Partner-Enabled Learning (PEL) and Environmental Sustainability (ES).

Our latest blog in this series features a PPIE project exploring the role of Community-based Rehabilitation (CobReh) in heart disease and depression in Nigeria. The project was co-led by Dr Dung Jidong, Clinical Psychologist and Professor Nusrat Husain, Cultural Psychiatrist.

While there is growing awareness around the prevalence of heart disease and depression, the two conditions occur together more often than people realise: about 1 in 5 people with coronary heart disease (CHD) also suffers from a major depressive disorder.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), a key treatment to these health issues is rehabilitation, which typically involves a range of activities, medicine and training to restore one’s health following a period of illness.

Unfortunately, more than 50% of people in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are not receiving the rehabilitation they need. In Nigeria, community-based rehabilitation (CobReh) services, including education, exercise and psychological support, are virtually absent, leading to increased death rates, more hospital admissions and lower quality of life.

Recognising this, Dr Dung Jidong and Prof Nusrat Husain set out to develop a relevant and accessible CobReh programme that can address the significant gaps in healthcare in LMICs.

To begin, they proposed a PPIE event that would bring together a group of stakeholders that all play a part in meeting the health and socioeconomic needs of people experiencing both heart diseases and mental health conditions.

By gathering patients, carers, researchers, community members, clinicians, community leaders, and healthcare policymakers, the event aims to explore the following questions:

• How should the CobReh programme be co-developed, planned and delivered?
• How can different stakeholders collaborate to co-produce the CobReh programme?
• How can service‑users, family caregivers and clinicians take the lead in co‑designing and guiding the CobReh programme?

Following Dung and Nusrat’s successful application for the SR Funding Call, along with support from the Centre in Africa for Living and Learning, the PPIE event was hosted at the Federal Medical Centre (FMC) in Abuja, Nigeria on 23 June 2025.

The team was able to gather valuable insights on why a CobReh programme designed for Nigeria’s medical, cultural and emotional context is so necessary. Several participants expressed confusion and uncertainty surrounding their conditions, highlighting the need for collaboration:

“Can someone with heart disease and depression really recover?”

“[I was worrying too much] I didn’t know the problem was heart disease… You people will teach us because we are not doctors”

Some patients also spoke about the role of religion and belief in shaping their experiences, while others shared the stigma of being labelled an ‘ogbanje’ (evil person) because of their conditions.

Overall, the PPIE event demonstrated the value of giving key stakeholders a voice. Looking ahead, Dung and Nusrat’s team is optimistic about conducting further research and co-developing a CobReh programme that truly reflects the lived experiences, concerns and needs of heart disease and depression patients in LMICs.

Additional information:

• Dr Dung Jidong and Prof Nusrat Husain are members of The Global Mental Health & Cultural Psychiatry (GMHCP) Research Group, which advocates for equitable healthcare across the world.
• Prof Nusrat Husain is the director of the Global Centre for Research on Mental Health Inequalities (Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust)
• In January 2026, Federal Medical Centre (FMC) Abuja also hosted a PPIE event on cancer care with the University of Manchester and other partners.