I am an Assistant Professor in the Master of Public Health Program at the University of Puget Sound. I completed my PhD at Georgetown University and I was a FY2018 Fulbright-Hays Fellow. My research interests include the politics of global health, African studies, foreign aid and NGOs, international "development," and the health policy process.
My dissertation research focuses on how development actors, priorities, and projects shape the work of community health workers in Malawi. I employ qualitative and ethnographic methods to determine how the structure of health provision determines the behavior and practice of community health workers of various cadres. Understanding the role of both domestic and external pressures within the health system can contribute to identifying the impetus for successful community health programs. This is especially relevant in low-resource contexts where external actors play a large role in health systems practice and service delivery.
Prior to beginning my PhD at Georgetown, I earned a dual Master of Public Health degree (as part of an Erasmus Mundus Joint Master's Program) from the University of Sheffield (UK) and University of Copenhagen (Denmark). For my MPH thesis, I studied the health policy agenda-setting process in Tanzania, conducting interviews with policymakers to understand their perspectives on power in decision-making.
My dissertation research focuses on how development actors, priorities, and projects shape the work of community health workers in Malawi. I employ qualitative and ethnographic methods to determine how the structure of health provision determines the behavior and practice of community health workers of various cadres. Understanding the role of both domestic and external pressures within the health system can contribute to identifying the impetus for successful community health programs. This is especially relevant in low-resource contexts where external actors play a large role in health systems practice and service delivery.
Prior to beginning my PhD at Georgetown, I earned a dual Master of Public Health degree (as part of an Erasmus Mundus Joint Master's Program) from the University of Sheffield (UK) and University of Copenhagen (Denmark). For my MPH thesis, I studied the health policy agenda-setting process in Tanzania, conducting interviews with policymakers to understand their perspectives on power in decision-making.
I have previously held positions at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where I worked on cost-effectiveness and decision analysis tools to inform U.S. national policies on cancer screening; the World Health Organization, where I worked on development and refinement of the Health Systems Performance Assessment toolkit and authored case studies for the Health 2020 and Health in all Policies (HiaP) intiatives; and Mapi Research Trust, where I analyzed epidemiological research to develop clinical proposal grids for patient-reported outcomes questionnaires.