As the director of NAHEDO, she coordinated a two-day international knowledge translation workshop on research and shared experiences on medical abortion supported by World Health Organization (WHO) in 2013.

Dr Makanyengo as director of NAHEDO and Co Investigator has 15 years experience in various research projects. In 2014, through NAHEDO, she participated in a study funded by Johns Hopkins University, Public Health Department, USA, on “enhanced economic empowerment initiatives for HIV prevention among youth living in the urban slums of Kenya”. The abstract was accepted as a poster in the APHA conference in San Diego in 2018 of which she, together with the principal Investigator Larrisa Jennings, were in attendance. The study titled ‘” Lessons learned from using respondent-driven sampling (RDS) to assess sexual risk behaviors among Kenyan young adults living in urban slum settlements: A process evaluation” was published in PLOS ONE in April 2020.  

She coordinated and oversee the smooth running of all the research activities in collaboration with the Study PI (Dr. Larissa Jennings Mayo-Wilson, IUSPH, U.S.) and the Local PI (Dr. Muthoni Mathai, University of Nairobi, Kenya). Dr. Mak’anyengo has worked with Dr. Jennings Mayo-Wilson since 2016 with urban youth in Kenya and she has co-authored four peer-reviewed manuscripts (3 published and 1 under review) in collaboration with Indiana University School of Public Health (IUSPH) and the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) Center for AIDS Research (CFAR).