Dr Meghna Ranganathan

Associate Professor

United Kingdom

Email
Meghna

My research used mixed methods approaches to explore the links between social protection and livelihood strengthening programmes and sexual and reproductive health, with a focus on gender and gender-based violence and adolescent health in low and middle-income countries. I have both research and programmatic experience, including conducting feasibility assessments, providing input into study designs, tool development and data analysis for programme evaluations for various international development organisations, including the UN and non-governmental organisations.

My background includes a PhD in Public Health and Policy from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), an MSc in Health Policy, Planning and Financing from the London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE) and an MSc in Public Health from the University of Edinburgh, UK. I am Deputy co-director of the Center for Evaluation at LSHTM, co-director of the Gender Violence Health Center at the LSHTM and a core team member of the Cash Transfers and Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) Research Collaborative. I am an Associate Editor of the journal PLOS One. I have held honorary positions at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg and was previously a member of the DFID-funded STRIVE Research Consortium.

Affiliations

Department of Global Health and Development

Faculty of Public Health and Policy

Centres

Centre for Evaluation

Teaching

I am the module co-organiser for the Economic Analysis for Health Policy module offered in Term 2, and teach on the Health Services module in Term 1. I have also taught on the Introduction to Health Economics and Basic Maths modules. I tutor on the MSc Public Health and MSc Control of Infectious Diseases modules. I currently supervise 4 PhD students and supervise MSc summer projects.

Research

I have a particular interest in interventions that tackle the structural drivers of HIV/AIDS and intimate partner violence (IPV), with a focus on gender-based violence among women and adolescents. I am the co-principal investigator on an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) secondary analysis grant. In that role, I have been leading efforts to evaluate the scale-up of an economic intervention to examine the relationship between women’s empowerment and IPV among a cohort of women in rural South Africa. The intervention combines a poverty-focused microfinance programme with gender training and HIV education. I co-lead a couple of studies investigating pathways between cash transfers and IPV, and transactional sex and HIV infection in sub-Saharan Africa. I am also the co-principal investigator of a study funded by the British Academy to develop a measure for sexual harassment in Tanzania. For my doctoral research, my research was embedded in a conditional cash transfer trial and I employed quantitative and qualitative methods to examine the socio-economic factors associated with adolescent women’s engagement in transactional sex and its association with HIV infection.