I'm a Research Fellow in Maternal Health working on implementation research and evaluations of complex interventions.
I've been with the School since 2014-15 when I came to do the MSc Demography & Health. Prior to that, I designed and taught a leadership and social change course at an international women's university in Chittagong, Bangladesh and spent several years working on political campaigns for U.S.-based reproductive rights advocacy organisations.
Affiliations
Teaching
I currently teach on the Health Systems and Family Planning Programmes modules. I previously taught on Basic Epidemiology, Statistics for Epidemiology and Population Health (STEPH) and Analysing Survey and Population Data (ASPD).
I'm also a regular tutor on the 'Write your paper based on Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data on reproductive and child health' short course at Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp.
Research
My research interests are in the measurement and improvement of care coverage and quality in maternal health services. I'm particularly interested in using realist evaluation methods to examine the implementation and impacts of quality improvement interventions.
I received the LSHTM Health and Hygiene Seed Grant 2023 and am currently leading an exploratory study in Nepal on maternity service hygiene infrastructure and facility design. I've also been involved in two MRC-funded evaluations of efforts to improve care during pregnancy in South and Southeast Asia. One was a cluster randomised trial of continuous quality improvement to increase coverage of HIV, syphilis and Hepatitis B testing in pregnancy in Indonesia. The second was an implementation study in Nepal of an electronic decision support system (EDSS) to improve the quality of antenatal care in rural primary care facilities. As part of the process evaluation in Nepal, I'm completing a part-time staff PhD using mixed-method approaches to investigate implementation of the EDSS and its impact on clinical workflow and record-keeping.
Previously I was part of the Maternal healthcare markets Evaluation Team (MET), a multidisciplinary group conducting research on the private sector's role in reproductive health care. I conducted analyses of Demographic & Health Survey data to study public and private sector provision of family planning and maternity care in low- and middle-income countries.
I'm a member of the Maternal and Newborn Health Group (MNHG).