Jennifer Palmer BSc MSc PhD

Research Fellow

Jen Palmer is a a social scientist and operational researcher based in the International Centres for Eye Health and Evidence in Disability (ICEH and ICED) and the Centre for Maternal Reproductive & Child Health (MARCH). She conducted her PhD on case-detection in human African trypanosomiasis (HAT, sleeping sickness) in post-conflict South Sudan, with a special focus on patient and healthcare worker utilisation of passive screening services. Jen holds a BSc, Hon in Microbiology & Immunology from McGill University and completed an MSc in Control of Infectious Diseases at LSHTM. She has also worked with non-governmental organisations in post-conflict and emergency contexts in Africa and Asia.

Affiliation

Teaching

Jen teaches on the MSc modules, Designing Disease Control Programmes in Developing Countries and Analysis & Design of Research Studies and the short course, Understanding an Eye Health System to Achieve Vision2020. She is a course tutor for the in-house MSc Control of Infectious Diseases and has developed course content for the distance-learning Infectious Diseases masters.

Research

In her PhD, Jen combined anthropological and epidemiological methods to understand community disease discourses, patient treatment-seeking and healthcare worker referral practices in the Nimule HAT focus in Magwi County, South Sudan. This work was in collaboration with Medical Emergency Relief International (Merlin) and was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research in partnership with the Public Health Agency of Canada as well as the Sir Halley Stewart Trust. She is currently interested in developing community-based, low-technology interventions for HAT and other neglected tropical diseases in the region.

Since her PhD, Jen has collaborated on a study of refugee/IDP population estimation using satellite imagery and a study on sustainability of physical rehabilitation systems in fragile states with Handicap International.

She is currently working on a series of projects funded by Sightsavers and CBM to map human resources in eye care in sub-Saharan Africa and explore local sustainability practices in eye care in Tanzania. She is also researching the regulatory and policy environment surrounding access to abortion care and family planning services in South Sudan as part of a multi-year DfID evaluation of their Prevention of Maternal Death from Unwanted Pregnancies (PMDUP) programme.

Jen is broadly interested in the implementation of health programmes in conflict-affected and emergency settings and is a member of the Public Health in Humanitarian Crises Group at the school.

Research areas

  • Complex interventions
  • Conflict
  • Diagnostics
  • Disease control
  • Ethnography
  • Health services research
  • Health systems
  • Health workers
  • Implementation research
  • Maternal health
  • Mixed methods
  • Qualitative methods
  • Surveillance

Disciplines

  • Anthropology
  • Epidemiology
  • Operational research
  • Social Sciences

Disease and Health Conditions

  • African trypanosomiasis
  • Disability
  • Eye diseases
  • Infectious disease
  • Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs)

Regions

  • Sub-Saharan Africa (developing only)

Countries

  • Somalia
  • South Sudan
  • Tanzania

Other interests

  • Access To Care
  • Eye Health
  • Family Planning
  • Fragile States
  • International Eye Health
  • Neglected Tropical Diseases
  • Post Conflict Reconstruction
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