Brigitta Kepkey: MA Psychology student is Winner of the Best Free Paper Presentation Prize of the 9th BIGOSA Virtual Scientific Meeting.
Brigitta Kepkey is currently a Master’s student in the Department of Psychology at Stellenbosch University, where she completed her undergraduate degree and her Honours in Psychology with distinction. In 2019, she received a departmental award for academic excellence. She currently serves as the secretary on the board of directors for the STAC foundation, a NPO that focuses on community transformation and is also a qualified life coach. Brigitta is also involved in research on supporting students in the extended degree programme (EDP) in the Faculty of Medicine and Health Science where she is a research assistant. Her MA thesis explores the barriers to and facilitators of adherence to intravenous chemotherapy among breast cancer patients and her research interests include adherence behaviours, health psychology and women’s health.
Brigitta has presented some of the findings of her thesis from the perspectives of healthcare workers at the 7th Southern African Students Psychology Conference in 2021 as well as the Breast Interest Group of Southern Africa’s (BIGOSA) Virtual Scientific Meeting in 2021.
Recently at the 9th BIGOSA Virtual Scientific Meeting, hosted by the Breast Interest Group of Southern Africa (BIGOSA) held on the 16th of October 2021, she was awarded the Best Free Paper Presentation Prize which included a monetary prize sponsored by Mrs Olga Stathoulis. Her presentation was titled, ‘Barriers to and facilitators of adherence to intravenous chemotherapy among breast cancer patients at a tertiary hospital in the Western Cape’. Brigitta is supervised by Dr. Bronwyne Coetzee and Prof. Ashraf Kagee.