Jamil Said, MD

• Clinical phenotype
• Cohort
• Gene mapping
• Neuroinflammation
• Neurology
• Gene-pesticide exposure interaction

Dr Jamil Said is a neurologist and co-lead of the AMPATH Neuroconsortium, working at the intersection of clinical care, training, and research to strengthen neurology across East Africa. He practises at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret, Kenya’s second national referral hospital that cares for over 25 million people, and holds a faculty appointment at Moi University College of Health Sciences, where he contributes to the training of the next generation of Kenyan neurologists. The realities of practising neurology in a setting of vast catchment, few specialists, and persistent resource gaps have shaped his research questions and deepened his commitment to building local infrastructure and investigator-led science.

Through AMPATH — a long-standing partnership between Moi University, Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital, and a consortium of North American academic institutions — he co-leads the Neuroconsortium, which coordinates neurological clinical services, training, and research under a model of bidirectional collaboration. His international partners include Indiana University, the University of Texas at Austin, and Duke University, with work spanning clinical capacity building, trainee exchange, and collaborative research grounded in equity and co-ownership.

His research focuses on neurodegenerative diseases in underrepresented African populations, with a particular interest in Parkinson’s disease and motor neuron disease. He aims to apply gene–exposome and multi-omics approaches to better understand disease risk, progression, and population-specific genetic architecture. This work is still at an early stage, laying the foundation for a programme integrating clinical phenotyping, genomic analysis, and exposome assessment in Kenyan cohorts.

Through the Global Parkinson’s Genetics Program, he hopes to contribute East African cohorts and perspectives, advance regional capacity for Parkinson’s disease genetics research, and help catalyse a broader network for neurodegeneration science across East Africa.