Bakita Kasadha
Health researcher, writer, poet
Bakita Kasadha is a multi-award-winning health researcher, health writer and poet, based in the UK. She has shared her poetry and spoken internationally, including Latitude Festival, Wilderness Festival and Manchester Pride. She has been commissioned for the Sainsbury’s Group Black History Month campaign, National Stephen Lawrence Day, 40th anniversary of the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt. Her poem Numbers Game inspired the creation of a multi-million-pound community fund to prevent new HIV cases and support people with HIV. In 2024, she was awarded the Prudence Mabele Prize ‘in recognition of her work and personal commitment as an activist whose work and personal commitment best embodies the values, spirit and activism of Prudence Mabele.
She is a researcher at the University of Oxford and worked on the award-winning HIV and infant-feeding study, NOURISH-UK. In 2022, Dr Shema Tariq and Bakita co-edited a special collection entitled HIV and Women's Health: Where Are We Now? Bakita has written for a wide range of publications, including the British Journal of Healthcare Management, Glamour, Metro, Black Ballad and gal-dem. She is the former Chair of the Global Network of Young People Living with HIV and Glitch, an award-winning UK charity working towards ending online abuse.
