Dr Susannah Mayhew BA MA PhD

Senior Lecturer in Health Policy and Reproductive Health

I did my PhD in the Health Policy Unit in the 1990s then worked at the Nuffield Institute for Health, University of Leeds until the end of 2001 when I joined the Centre for Population Studies at LSHTM. In 2012 I moved to the Department of Global Health and Development in the Faculty of Public Health and Policy.

I lived in West Africa for a number of years (and was born in Ghana!) and have conducted research in a variety of countries across sub-Saharan Africa and South-East Asia including Ghana, South Africa, Kenya, Swaziland and Pakistan.

Affiliation

Teaching

I teach a variety of courses on the PSD MScs (Demography and Health, Reproductive and Sexual Health Research) and coordinate the Family Planning Programmes module. I am also involved in Distance Learning tutoring.

I give a range of external lectures at institutions including the Nuffield Institute for Health, Leeds, UCL and other European universities. I am an external examiner for a module on international health at LSE.

I have supervised seven doctoral students who have successfully completed, and currently supervise another who is on fieldwork, who have/are examining a range of reproductive health and policy issues (including abortion, domestic violence, maternal health policy, HIV/RH integration and contracting NGOs to deliver HIV services to marginalised groups) in Ghana, Swaziland, Malaysia, Indonesia and Pakistan.

Research

My main research interests lie in analysing the health policy and systems development issues in relation to population, sexual and reproductive (including maternal) health and services. I have conducted research at policy, programme and community levels in a wide range of countries.

In sub-Saharan Africa a large body of my work has been exploring the integration of reproductive health and HIV/AIDS services to understand how policies are translated into practice and how policies and programme structures affect service delivery. I am currently the PI on a Gates-funded five-year research programme to assess different models of delivering integrated RH/HIV services in Kenya and Swaziland.

I am also PI on a new ESRC-DFID funded 3-year research project to examine the accountability of global, bi-lateral and national institutions involved in climate change policy and governance, with a focus on vulnerability, climate-change adaptation capacity and the impact of population dynamics.

Under previous DFID Research Programme Consortia (RPCs) I coordinated work under the theme of 'Integration' for the DFID RPC on 'Reproductive Health and HIV' and managed LSHTM's component of another DFID RPC on 'Reproductive Health and Rights'. At community and service delivery levels in Ghana, early work identified community perceptions and use of STI/HIV services. I recently completed an EU-funded research project in Ghana on perceptions of Emergency Contraception among urban dwellers and providers, as part of a four-country study comparing acceptability and accessibility of EC in Ghana, Burkina Faso, Senegal and Morocco.

In Asia, my work has been concentrated in Pakistan where I was involved in two projects investigating the health needs and service provision for marginalised groups at risk of HIV (sex workers and injecting drug users) and documenting their experiences of abuse.

My systems level work has included investigation of decentralisation dynamics in sub-Saharan Africa (a project with the Nuffield Institute for Health, Leeds) and an analysis of recent attempts to contract NGOs to deliver HIV services to marginal groups in Pakistan (with a doctoral student).

Research areas

  • Health policy
  • Health sector development
  • Health systems
  • Reproductive health
  • Sexual health

Disciplines

  • Demography
  • Policy analysis
  • Sociology

Disease and Health Conditions

  • HIV/AIDS
  • Sexually transmitted infection

Regions

  • South Asia
  • Sub-Saharan Africa (developing only)
  • World

Countries

  • Ghana
  • Kenya
  • Pakistan
  • Swaziland

Other interests

  • Climate
  • Developing countries
  • Ethics And Human Rights
  • Family Planning
  • Global Health Governance
  • Governance
  • Health And Development
  • Health Policy Process
  • Health Service Integration
  • Marginalised Populations
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