Susannah Mayhew is Professor of Health Policy, Systems and Reproductive Health in the department of Global Health and Development at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. She was co-Director of the LSHTM Centre for Maternal, Adolescent, Reproductive and Child Health (MARCH) from 2022-2024 and is currently the Centre's Climate Lead.
She was head of department from 2015-2018 and for three years before that headed the Anthropology, Policy and Politics Group in the same department. She has taught widely across the school in EPH and PHP (both face to face and DL) including on reproductive health, gender, rights, climate and health, and health policies and systems.
She has led numerous multi-partner research projects, and held in excess of £17mil in research funding, over the past 25 years in countries across sub-Saharan Africa and South East Asia. At present she works primarily in West and East Africa where she is conducting research on cross-sectoral responses to climate and health challenges, including reproductive health, with a focus on community engagement.
Affiliations
Centres
Teaching
Susannah has taught widely across the school in EPH and PHP (both face to face and DL) including on reproductive health, gender, rights, climate and health, and health policies and systems in various MSc programmes run by the faculties of PHP and EPH. She regularly gives guest lectures at other institutions in these topic areas.
She was Exam Board Chair for the DL MSc in Global Health Policy and is current EBC for the MSc in Sexual and Reproductive Health Policy and Practice run jointly with the University of Ghana.
She has supervised 15 doctoral students to successful completion and regularly examines doctoral theses at other universities in the UK and world wide.
Research
Susannah works in partnership with institutions around the world to conduct research in: reproductive health and rights; cross-sector research; health systems and systems integration research (including in epidemic-response); community engagement in crisis-response including climate change and infectious disease outbreaks; policy implementation and analysis.
Key projects she has led include the multi-country Integra Initiative evaluating the integration of HIV and SRH services (www.integrainitiative.org) (Gates funded); climate governance (http://www.globalclimategovernance.org) (ESRC funded); health systems strengthening in post-Ebola Sierra Leone (https://responding-to-ebola.org) (MRC funded); and Rethinking Humanitarian Approaches | LSHTM (MRF funded).
She is currently leading PARES (Building Partnerships for Resilience) | LSHTM a NIHR funded consortium researching and developing intersectoral responses to climate and health challenges in sub-Saharan Africa, with a focus on community engagement. Susannah also leads research on innovative cross-sector programming with NGO and health system partners to respond to climate, livelihoods and reproductive health needs in Uganda, funded by Defra's Darwin Initiative Projects – The Margaret Pyke Trust.