Salum has a special interest in housing and health, which developed after his involvement in designing and implementing a pilot housing project. The project aimed to assess affordable and acceptable house designs to improve health in hot and humid rural areas of Africa. Salum can personally relate to the housing issues in rural parts of Tanzania and their contribution to poor health, as he was born and raised in those villages. This project marked the beginning of his journey in the field of housing and health.
Currently, he serves as a co-Principal Investigator of a field trial that evaluates the impact of novel house designs on preventing diseases such as malaria, respiratory tract infections, and diarrhea. Currently, Salum is a PhD student at the University of Oxford, Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine. He also serves as a Director of CSK Research Organization.
Salum has extensive experience in coordinating large research projects, including tightly regulated clinical and drug trials. Salum hold a Master of Medical Sciences major in Public Health (MPH) from Lund University, Sweden. He also hold a postgraduate diploma in clinical trials (PG-Dip CT) from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a certificate of global health effectiveness from Harvard School of Public Health. He did his bachelor degree in Nursing from Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences.