Biography
Positions
Education
Current University Committees & Engagement
- Quality Assurance - SoN
- AAGBV - University-wide
Languages spoken
- English
- Lwo
- Swahili
- Luganda
Teaching Areas
Undergraduate Programs
- Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BScN)
Graduate Supervision
Accepting Students for Supervision
School year
- 2026/27
Guidelines or Expectations for Prospective Students
Graduate studies in health, nursing and social works
Research
Research Interests
Dr. Morris Komakech is a health equity researcher and participatory implementation scientist who studies how colonial governance continues to produce health inequities through specific institutional pathways in administration, law, policy, and professional practice. His Colonial Determinants of Health framework advances this argument across two geographic contexts, Canada and postcolonial Africa, tracing how the same institutional logics shape social policy failures, health service gaps, and nursing education in both settings. Rather than stopping at diagnosis, he co-designs and tests multilevel interventions with community members and policy makers, building responses that operate simultaneously across clinical, institutional, and legislative levels. A second stream of his work examines how nursing education and professional formation either embed or obstruct structural health equity, with particular attention to what curriculum change requires at the institutional level.
Current Research Projects / Labs
- Colonial Determinants of Health
- Developing and testing the Colonial Determinants of Health framework to explain how colonial governance perpetuates health inequities in Africa. Created collaboratively with trainee scholars from Canadian and African institutions and positioned for competitive national and international funding.
- Voices from the Frontiers – Global Health
- A participatory study on how extreme weather impacts health and social cohesion in Gulu, Amuru and Kitgum Districts, Northern Uganda—areas marked by conflict, displacement, and environmental disruption. Community members co-designed the study using digital storytelling and Acholi oral traditions to produce community-owned knowledge. Grounded in Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis and critical consciousness. Funded by a $0,000 internal grant; ethics review pending.
- Healthcare Access in Rural and Northern Ontario – North Bay Immigrants Study
- Examines structural barriers to healthcare access in underserved Ontario regions, aiming to produce findings actionable by regional health authorities and policymakers.
- Regent Park Bereavement Study – Transgenerational Impact of Gangs-and-Guns Violence
- A community-engaged study with Regent Park residents exploring how bereavement intersects with structural life conditions in a marginalized Toronto neighborhood and its implications for health services.
- Equity in Nursing Education and Professional Practice
- Posits that nursing curricula shape professional practice by highlighting or ignoring structural health equity, influencing graduates’ responses to patients’ inequitable conditions. Project critically examines the implementation and barriers of structural equity practices in Canadian nursing curricula and professional formation, identifying institutional obstacles that hinder equity commitments from translating into practice.
- Health Policy Lab
- A mentorship initiative positioning graduate and undergraduate trainees as collaborators in health equity research production and dissemination, with explicit support for emerging scholars from diverse backgrounds to publish.
Open to Media Inquiries
Publications
Selected peer Reviewed Articles
Okumu, M., Logie, C. H., Admassu, Z., MacKenzie, F., Tailor, L. S., Hakiza, R., ...Komakech, M.D.C & Windsor, L. C. (2026). Multilevel Determinants of HIV Prevention Among Urban Refugee Youth in Uganda: Baseline Findings from the Tushirikiane-4-Uthabiti Trial. AIDS and Behavior, 1-15.
Borras, A., Komakech, M., & Raphael, D. (2023). A Policy-related Homelessness Discourses in Canada: Implications for Nursing Research, Practice, and Advocacy. Witness: The Canadian Journal of Critical Nursing Discourse, 5(1), 31-54.
Muller, J., Mohamed, F. A., Masciangelo, M. C., Komakech, M., Bryant, T., Rafiq, A., & Raphael, D. (2022). A bibliometric analysis of Health Promotion International content regarding unions, unionization, and collective agreements. Health Promotion International, 37(2), 137. [Impact Factor = 3.734]
Raphael, D., & Komakech, M. (2020). Conceptualizing and researching health equity in Africa through a political economy of health lens–Rwanda in perspective. World Development Perspectives, 19, 100207. [Impact Factor = 5.278]
Komakech, MDC. (2020). Under-the-Mango-Tree: a theatre-based male EMTCT engagement intervention in post-conflict northern Uganda. Global health promotion, 27(3), 113-121. [Impact Factor = 2.066]
Selected Book Chapters
Okumu, M., Komakech, M. D. C., Logie, C. H., Harvey-Sánchez, A., Katisi, B., Hakiza, R., & Mugisho, J., on behalf of Tushirikiane Peer Navigators. (In-press). Digital health support for refugees in Kampala, Uganda: The role of peer navigators. In E. Chase, S. Bell, P. Aggleton, & P. Mane (Eds.), Lived experience: Critical perspectives in a changing world (pp. xx–xx). UCL Press
Komakech, MDC & Nyirakanaani, C. (In-print). The Neoliberal Marginalization of Indigeneity: A Case of “Orphaned Indigenous African Food Crops”. In Wane, J. & Demi, S. (Eds). Food, Culture, Identity and Environment: A Global Perspective. (pp. xx-xx). CDS Press.
Okumu, M., Komakech, M. D. C., Logie, C. H., Harvey-Sánchez, A., Katisi, B., Hakiza, R., & Mugisho, J., on behalf of Tushirikiane Peer Navigators. (In-press). Digital health support for refugees in Kampala, Uganda: The role of peer navigators. In E. Chase, S. Bell, P. Aggleton, & P. Mane (Eds.), Lived experience: Critical perspectives in a changing world (pp. xx–xx). UCL Press
Komakech, MDC (2025). Social Determinants of Health in Africa: An Overview (Chp 19). In Bryant, T. (Ed). The Handbook of Social Determinants of Health. Edward Edgars Publishers.