Profile: Dr Charlotte Watts
Dr Charlotte Watts from the Health Policy Unit talks about her career and research
"What attracted me to LSHTM in 1995 was its breadth of disciplines and expertise, and its global perspective on health. My first year was spent gaining broader public health training and conducting field-work in Zimbabwe, where I adapted a statistical technique (capture-recapture) most commonly used in population biology to estimate the extent to which women trade sex. My interest in violence against women was sparked whilst I was there. Spending time with field-workers, women often talked about violence either in their own lives or in the lives of family members. I realised that violence and the fear of violence was a fundamental concern to women, but that it was not widely discussed in the research or public health community. I spent three years working with a local women's organisation and the University of Zimbabwe to collect data on the prevalence of violence against women, and its associations with women's health.
From working in Zimbabwe I learnt the importance of working in partnership with local organisations. I applied this knowledge when working as senior technical advisor to the WHO multi-country study on women's health and domestic violence. I was part of a team that developed the study protocol, tools and safety guidelines for community surveys on domestic and sexual violence, and supported its implementation in 15 sites in 10 countries. The findings from the study illustrate not only the extent to which violence against women is prevalent around the world, but also that there is significant variation in the levels of violence occurring – both between settings in the same country, as well as between countries. Although the causes of violence are complex, this local variation suggests that there may be local factors that influence the degree to which women are at risk of violence. A better understanding of the causes of this variation can be used to identify how to prevent future violence.
An exciting new development is the formation of a Centre for Research on Gender Violence and Health which will span all departments at LSHTM, and will focus on working with NGO and government partners to conduct policy-oriented research on violence and health. In particular, we hope to learn more about key risk factors that may be amenable to intervention; to better document the health and social consequences of violence and their implications for interventions; and to evaluate promising interventions. Our work will span a range of forms of violence – including intimate partner violence, trafficking, and sexual abuse. I am particularly interested in conducting research to inform strategies to address women's vulnerability to violence and HIV infection.
People wonder why I have devoted my research career to working on distressing issues such as violence and HIV/AIDS. Violence against women is emerging as an important risk factor for a range of ill-health problems, but to date there is relatively limited evidence on how best to intervene. HIV is a health issue of global attention, yet the impact of violence on women's vulnerability to infection is seldom addressed. The strength of being at LSHTM is that it enables me to draw upon the range of disciplinary strengths of staff and its wide network of contacts to rigorously examine these issues, and to bring them to the attention of the research and policy community."
