I am a reproductive epidemiologist with degrees in demography, epidemiology and biology. I led the maternal health and newborn health group until the end of 2020. My areas of expertise include measurement of maternal morbidity and mortality, perinatal mortality and evaluation of different modes of delivering maternal health and family planning services.
I have worked in the Middle East (Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Turkey), in sub-Saharan Africa (Benin, Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, Zambia, Tanzania & Uganda) and in India, Nepal, Indonesia and Brazil. I have collaborated with a number of Ministries of Health, agencies and foundations (including DFID, WHO, World Bank, UNICEF, USAID, MotherCare, the Ford Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation).
I co-founded the MARCH Centre for Maternal, Adolescent Reproductive and Child Health at the LSHTM. I currently co-lead an academic department with over 200 members (140 staff and 65 doctoral students).
I am currently working on projects in Nepal, Lebanon, the DRC and Liberia and on Palestinian refugees.
Affiliations
Centres
Teaching
I teach on Extended Epidemiology, Basic Epidemiology, Foundations in Reproductive Health Research, Family Planning Programmes, and Current Issues in Maternal and Perinatal Health and have supervised numerous masters and doctoral students. I co-organize the Basic Epidemiology Module. I am on the Exam Board for the MSc in Epidemiology.
Research
As part of my research, I have run, or been a member of, three DFID-funded Research Programme Consortium and led work with MotherCare and the MM+ component of IMMPACT which focused on methods for measuring maternal mortality.
I have experience of measuring maternal mortality at national (ran three national studies in Egypt and Turkey, and contributed to one in Syria) and subnational level (was co-PI on the Ghana ObaapaVitA trial, a large-scale RCT of 120,000 women testing whether Vitamin A supplementation reduces maternal mortality). I let the 2016 Lancet Maternal Health Series.
I enjoy working with existing data, and I have worked extensively in developing innovative indicators of service provision and capability, and am interested in physical accessibility to childbirth. Ongoing research includes writing on inplementation research of electronic decision support tools to help provide better antenatal care in Nepal; a study looking at countries that have made better than average progress in reducing maternal and neonatal mortality (Exemplars in maternal and neonatal health); a study of signal functions for maternal and newborn health; MOMENTUM for Safe Surgery and Family Planning; and a study working with Liberian colleagues as part of Countdown to 2030 to support the national planning for RMNCAH.
Selected Publications
