Research
My research interests focus on demographic and statistical modelling. I am particularly interested in women's health in Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs), and in particular on the lifecourse approach to women's health. I have focused on the impact of reproductive health on both demographic and public health outcomes and on the impact that conflict has on health outcomes include timing to menarche. Recent projects I have led include: deprivation and health in the occupied Palestinian territory and cumulative reproductive histories and later life health. I currently working on two projects looking at menarche and menopause in LIMCs. These areas of my research agenda have led to ongoing collaborations with academics at the University of Belo Horizonte (Brazil), the Institute for Social and Economic Change (Bangalore, India), the University of Birzeit (Opl), the University of Southampton (UK) and with members of the Countdown to 2015 group.
As a statistical demographer I am particularly interested in the utilisation of secondary data in resource-poor settings and in how international definitions in census and sample surveys might affect the quality and level of reporting. In 2007 I was awarded a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship to work on the estimation of differential maternal mortality in developing countries using census data. The Fellowship will be dedicated to developing methods that can improve the analysis of mortality data collected through censuses using both demographic indirect techniques and statistical modelling.
Other projects I have been involved in include an ESRC-DIFD funded research project "Economic and social cost of Post-abortion care in Zambia" where I looked at the economic burden of unsafe abortion on Women in Zambia. More recently on a Wellcome funded looking at the use of web data to identify individuals' information seeking on abortion during a pandemic. In addition I have coordinating a project with the University of Birzeit with the to analyse the characteristics of women usually neglected by the health system such as menopausal, single or married early without children. Currently I am leading a study on the long term impact of reproductive lives in Indonesia.