Dr. Lisa Berkman, Faculty Chair of the Center for Population and Development Studies, is a social epidemiologist whose work focuses extensively on psychosocial influences on health outcomes. Her research has been oriented towards understanding social inequalities in health related to socioeconomic status, different racial and ethnic groups, and social networks, support and social isolation. The majority of her work is devoted to identifying the role of social networks and support in predicting declines in physical and cognitive functioning, onset of disease and mortality, especially related to cardiovascular or cerebrovascular disease.

David E. Bloom is an economist and demographer and the Clarence James Gamble Professor at the Harvard School of Public Health. In January 2003 he was appointed Chairman of the School's Department of Population and International Health. Professor Bloom received a B.S. in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University in 1976, an M.A. in Economics from Princeton University in 1978, and a Ph.D. in Economics and Demography from Princeton in 1981. Prior to joining the public health school faculty in 1996, Bloom served on the public policy faculty at Carnegie-Mellon University, and on the economics faculties at Harvard University and Columbia University. At Columbia, he was a Professor of Economics and the Department Chairman from 1990 to 1993. From 1996 to 1999 he served as Deputy Director of the Harvard Institute for International Development. Professor Bloom has worked extensively in the areas of labor, population, and health and has been retained as a consultant to various public and private organizations, both within the United States and throughout the developing world, including work in Indonesia, China, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, South Africa, Jamaica, and El Salvador. He has taught numerous courses on labor economics, development economics, global health and population, and statistics and econometrics at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, and has published more than one hundred fifty articles, book chapters, and books.

Sissela Bok, Senior Visiting Fellow, a writer and philosopher, received her B.A. and M.A. in psychology at the George Washington University in 1957 and 1958, and her Ph.D. in philosophy at Harvard University in 1970. She was formerly a Professor of Philosophy at Brandeis University. The third edition of her book Lying: Moral Choice in Private and Public Life (1978) was reissued in 1999 with a new preface. Other books include Secrets: On the Ethics of Concealment and Revelation (1982, 1989); A Strategy for Peace: Human Values and the Threat of War (1989); Alva Myrdal: A Daughter's Memoir (1991); Common Values (1996, reissued in 2002 with a new preface); and Mayhem: Violence as Public Entertainment (1998). With John Behnke, Bok has co-edited The Dilemmas of Euthanasia (1975) and, with Daniel Callahan, Ethics Teaching in Higher Education (1980). With Gerald Dworkin and R. G. Frey, she has co-authored Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide (1998).

Panka Deo serves as the staff assistant for the Center. His responsibilities include financial processing and general administration.

Nancy Dorsinville divides her time between Boston, New York, and her native Haiti, where, as Health Advisor for President Clinton's AIDS Initiative, she provides technical assistance to the Ministry of Health, and works to promote a human rights approach to multisectoral development organizations. An anthropologist and Center affiliate since 1997, Nancy leads the AIDS Policy Working Group at the Center. This group provides a forum for critical analysis of national and international policies on HIV/AIDS, including issues related to prevention, treatment, and care. From 1992 to 1997, Nancy served as the Director of the New York State AIDS Institute's Prevention Education Program in lower Manhattan. As a Bell Fellow at the Center from 1997 to 1998, Nancy's work focused on gender-based violence and conflict resolution, especially in Haiti, from a human security perspective. She sought strategies to improve the process for granting asylum and for intervening in domestic violence in immigrant communities.

Nedialka Douptcheva, Research Fellow, holds a MS in Population and International Health from Harvard School of Public Health and a BA in International Relations from Mount Holyoke College.  Currently she is working on two projects including population health in Kuwait, and the health effects of coal burning bans in different cities in Ireland.  Some of her other research interests include the use of information technology to increase access to health care in low resource settings.  Her Master's thesis focused on the gaps in human resources for health and examined how those can be supplemented by new advancements in technology.

Rebecca Firestone is Research Assistant for the Group on Reproductive Health and Rights at the Center, a forum that brings together academics and activists from the Boston area to debate international policy initiatives on gender, sexuality and reproduction. Rebecca is also a doctoral candidate in the Department of Society, Human Development and Health at the Harvard School of Public Health, where her research considers the social determinants and spatial distribution of child nutritional status in Thailand. Rebecca has consulted for a range of international health agencies, and prior to coming to Harvard, she worked for the Center for Health and Gender Equity, a reproductive health advocacy organization. Rebecca holds a master's degree in Public Health from the University of Washington, with a concentration in International Health.

Rose E. Frisch, Associate Professor of Population Sciences, Emeritus, at the Department of Population and International Health, Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Frisch obtained her Ph.D. in Genetics from the University of Wisconsin. She is Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the John S. Memorial Guggenheim Foundation, and former Sigma Xi National Lecturer from 1989-1990. Her research has shown that under-nutrition and intense physical activity can have a limiting effect on female fertility. She hypothesized that a critical, minimum amount of body fat is necessary for, and directly influences, female reproduction. Her research results are predictive and are now used clinically for evaluation of nutritional infertility and the restoration of fertility. Research on the long-term health of 5,498 U.S. college alumnae showed that moderate regular athletic activity resulted in a lower risk of breast cancer and cancers of the reproductive system and a lower risk of late onset diabetes in the menopausal years. She has shown how environmental factors of nutrition, physical activity and disease can affect each reproductive milestone from menarche to menopause. Leptin, a new protein hormone made by body fat, is a major signal to the hypothalamus. She has published numerous articles, and several books. The most recent, Female Fertility and the Body Fat Connection, University of Chicago Press, 2002, paperback 2004, covers her 35 years of research on the topic. 

W. Scott Gordon is a researcher at the Center for Population and Development Studies currently examining the interactions between global public-private health partnerships and health systems in developing countries. His past research at the Center has focused on the socioeconomic and socio-demographic distribution of treatment for schistosomiasis in Africa. Scott has been resident at the Center since 2001 and served as the Coordinator of the Schistosomiasis Research Program from 2002-2006.  Prior to coming to Harvard, Scott was the Associate Director for Program Development of Direct Relief International, a U.S.-based non-profit organization that supports hospitals and clinics in developing countries. He holds a Sc.D. in International Health Policy and a M.S. in Health Policy and Management from the Harvard School of Public Health and a B.A. in Environmental Studies from University of California at Santa Barbara.

Edward Green, Ph.D., is Senior Research Scientist and Director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project, based at the Center. He is a medical anthropologist with over 30 years of experience in developing countries in applied research, project design, implementation, and evaluation, as well as in social marketing and behavior change & communication (BCC) health education. Prior to joining the Center, he was Takemi Fellow at the Department of Population and International Health, Harvard School of Public Health. His sectoral experience includes AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases, family planning, primary health care, maternal and child health, children affected by war, water and sanitation. Dr. Green is a specialist in integrating traditional (indigenous) and "modern" health systems, and has pioneered a number of collaborative programs in AIDS prevention and primary health care involving African healers. His 2003 book, Rethinking AIDS Prevention, has helped shape current US AIDS prevention policy, as embodied in the ABC policies of USAID and PEPFAR. He is a member of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV and AIDS, (PACHA); a recent member of the Advisory Council of the Office of AIDS Research, Department of Health and Human Services; the board of AIDS.org; the board of the National Foundation for Alternative Medicine; and several other boards of directors. Dr. Green is the author of five books, over 300 peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, conference papers, and commissioned technical reports. CV in PDF Format.

Sofia Gruskin, J.D., M.I.A., is Director of the Program on International Health and Human Rights, and Associate Professor on Health and Human Rights in the Department of Population and International Health at the Harvard School of Public Health. She also serves as faculty chair for The Group on Reproductive Health and Rights at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies  Her work emphasizes the conceptual, methodological, policy and practice implications of linking health to human rights, with particular attention to women, children, gender issues, and vulnerable populations. She has extensive experience in research, training and programmatic work with nongovernmental, governmental and intergovernmental organizations working in the fields of health and human rights around the world. Professor Gruskin is the principal investigator for several UNAIDS, WHO and UNFPA sponsored projects intended to strengthen the health and human rights research and policy agenda-particularly in the areas of HIV/AIDS, sexual and reproductive health, child and adolescent health and gender-based violence. She serves on numerous boards and committees nationally and internationally, and is a permanent member of the NIH Behavioral and Social Consequences of HIV/AIDS study section. For more information, please visit: http://hsphsun3.harvard.edu/pihhr/index.html

Daniel Halperin, Ph.D., joined the Harvard University Center for Population and Development Studies in October 2006. Until then Dr. Halperin served for two years as the Prevention and Behavior Change Technical Advisor for USAID's Southern Africa Regional HIV/AIDS Program (based out of Mbabane, Swaziland). Prior to that, he was the Senior HIV Prevention and Behavior Change Advisor at USAID in Washington DC. Dr. Halperin has conducted epidemiological and ethnographic research for over thirty years on a number of health and sociocultural issues in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and other developing regions. Since completing doctoral training in cultural/medical anthropology and Latin American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley in 1995, his work has mainly focused on the heterosexual transmission of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, beginning with a three-year NIH postdoctoral fellowship at Berkeley's School of Public Health from 1995-8. Until joining USAID in August 2001, Dr. Halperin conducted research and managed HIV program activities as Assistant Professor at the University of California, San Francisco's Center for AIDS Prevention Studies (CAPS). One of the main research questions driving Dr. Halperin's HIV-AIDS investigations has been, "Why does HIV prevalence continue to be so low in many developing regions having high rates of other sexually transmitted infections, as well as other ‘classic' behavioral risk factors for an AIDS epidemic, and meanwhile HIV has reached such terribly high levels in regions like southern Africa?" Most of his research and scientific publications (including in leading journals such as The Lancet, British Medical Journal, AIDS, etc.) have therefore dealt with some of the previously more neglected HIV co-factors, such as concurrent sexual partner networks, lack of male circumcision, "dry sex" practices, alcohol use, and heterosexual anal intercourse. He has conducted field research and consultations over the years in a number of countries, including Brazil, South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, the Dominican Republic, Peru and in various inner-city US communities, and has an extensive background working with at-risk youth, particularly socially disadvantaged young men. He is fluent in Portuguese and Spanish, and conversant in some other languages, including Thai and Japanese.

Allison Herling, a Research Fellow in the AIDS Prevention Research Project, holds a B.A. in History and Political Science from Williams College and an M.S. in Public Health from Oregon State University. She has conducted research with youth in Uganda about the sociocultural context of delay of sexual debut and has also worked or conducted research in Kenya, Morocco, Jamaica, Zimbabwe, Malawi, and Mozambique. Her current research focuses on youth sexual behavior in the context of HIV prevention, the timing of sexual debut, the transition to adulthood among adolescents and links between youth and adult sexual behavior.

Allan G. Hill, Andelot Professor of Demography, Harvard School of Public Health and Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies. Professor Allan G. Hill has been the Andelot Professor of Demography at Harvard University since 1991. He directs the Education Office of the Department of Population and International Health in the Harvard School of Public Health and teaches courses there on demography, measuring population health, reproduction and reproductive health and on the assessment of the impact of health programs. His work focuses on the health transitions and their determinants in the Arab world and West Africa. Research in Mali and The Gambia included studies of the impact of selected health interventions and of the factors supporting high fertility. He recently directed the Women's Health Study of Accra whilst on leave at the University of Ghana 2002-4. He served as the Secretary-General of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population for eight years. He has served on the faculty of the School of Health Sciences, the American University of Beirut and the Medical School, University of Jordan, the Ghana School of Public Health and collaborates with the Social Research Center, American University in Cairo. In addition to his university career, Dr. Hill was for four years the first regional representative for the Population Council in the Middle East and North Africa based in Beirut and Amman.

Kenneth Hill is Associate Director, Center for Population and Development Studies, Visiting Professor of Population and International Health at the Harvard School of Public Health, and Professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. A demographer, Dr. Hill's research interests span a wide range of areas, including the development of new demographic measurement methods (especially for outcomes that prove difficult to measure, like mortality among adults and children, the need for family planning, or migration lacking documentation); the measurement of child mortality; the exploration of connections between economic crises and demographic parameters; policy impacts on demographic change; the effects of gender preferences on child health behaviors and fertility; the role of development on fertility decline (especially child mortality change); the demography of Sub-Saharan Africa; and the measurement of demographic parameters during public health crises and complex emergencies.

Anne Johnson is a doctoral student in the Department of Population and International Health at the Harvard School of Public Health. Her research, using qualitative methods, explores the well-being of women who have migrated for low-wage work, with a focus on women from the  Himalayas now working in the New York City area.

Vani Kulkarni is currently a lecturer on sociology in the department of sociology at Harvard University and a research fellow at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies. She received her B.A., M.A. and M. Phil. from the Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, and Ph.D. (with distinction) in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania in 2006. Her dissertation, entitled Health, Culture, and Democracy: The Case of Decentralization of Healthcare in India, is a sociological exploration of India's simultaneous pursuit of development and participatory democracy in the early 1990s to 2005. Her research interest/specialization lies at the intersection of health, democratic-decentralized governance system, culture, development, gender and social theory. Her work is currently mainly centered in South Asia where she has carried out extensive ethnographic field research. She is currently engaged in two projects. The first one is concerned with exploring the gender gap in self-reported health across various countries using world health statistics survey. The second one broadly relates to the acute distress of farmers resulting in a sharp rise in suicides in two Indian states. She has published in scholarly journals and books, such as Journal of International Affairs and Journal of Asian and African Studies. A state-of-art review of the methodology of poverty research and design of anti-poverty policies is under preparation.

Heidi Larson, PhD is a Research Associate at the Harvard Center for Population and Development and Associate Research Professor of International Development at Clark University.  She is a specialist in risk and rumor analysis and is currently working on a book on risk and rumor in global health, analyzing the rumor-driven polio vaccine boycott in Nigeria  along with other examples of managing public questioning and rumours  in public health.   Dr. Larson has served as a Senior Adviser to the UN and other international organizations on a number of public health issues including AIDS, TB, child health and vaccines, particularly focusing on the socio-cultural and political determinants of health, including the role of religion and belief systems. She has also advised on anticipating and managing organizational risks and rumor.

Dr. Larson is currently coordinating a UNAIDS commissioned initiative called aids2031, which is bringing together economists, epidemiologists, and biomedical, social and political scientists to map future options for the AIDS response. 2031 will mark 50 years since AIDS was first reported.

Michael J. Levin is currently a Mid-Career MPA Student at the Kennedy School. His Ph.D. in Anthropology from Michigan looked at the effects of population pressure on scarce resources on a 26 acre atoll in Micronesia. He worked for 8 years in the East-West Center's Population Program and followed with 27 years at the U.S. Census Bureau. He has worked in most of the Pacific Islands countries and territories and a dozen African countries, mostly assisting statistical offices in collecting, processing, and analyzing census and survey data. He has published many articles and several books, including the UN Editing Handbook, Alaska Natives in a Century of Change, and the co-authored Asians and Pacific Islanders in the United States.  At HCPDS, he is helping coordinate the revived census and survey training program.

Timothy Mah, a Research Fellow in the AIDS Prevention Research Project, received his Master's degree from the Harvard School of Public Health in June 2006 and is currently a doctoral candidate in the Department of Population and International Health at Harvard.  Prior to pursuing his graduate degree, Tim worked in the Public Policy and Communications Department at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation.  He also served two years with the US Peace Corps as a community health and HIV/AIDS education volunteer in The Gambia, West Africa.  In that capacity, he developed and implemented numerous HIV prevention initiatives targeted at young people.  Tim's research interests are in HIV prevention and in particular in the determinants and predictors of sexual behaviour change in response to HIV epidemics.  Tim received his BA in Biology from the University of Pennsylvania. 

Michael R. Reich is Taro Takemi Professor of International Health Policy and Director of the Takemi Program in International Health at the Harvard School of Public Health. He served as Center Director from 2001 to 2005 and before that was Chair of the Department of Population and International Health at HSPH. He received his Ph.D. in political science (1981), MA in East Asian Studies (1975), and BA in molecular biophysics and biochemistry (1974), all from Yale University. Dr. Reich has written about various aspects of international health policy, particularly the political dimensions of public health policy and pharmaceutical policy. His current research activities focus on access to health technologies in poor countries. He has provided policy advice for many organizations around the world, including national governments, international agencies, non-governmental organizations, private foundations, private corporations, and public-private partnerships. His recent books include: Public-Private Partnerships for Public Health (editor, distributed by Harvard University Press, 2002); Getting Health Reform Right (with M.J. Roberts, W. Hsiao, and P. Berman, Oxford University Press, 2004); Wounds of War (with J.M. Lamb, and M. Levy, distributed by Harvard University Press, 2004); and Access: How Do Good Health Technologies Get to Poor People in Poor Countries (with L. Frost, forthcoming).

Laura Reichenbach, Research Associate, holds a Doctorate of Science in Population and International Health from the Harvard School of Public Health and a Masters in Public Administration from Harvard' Kennedy School of Government. Her research is in the field of reproductive health, including gender issues of the health workforce, issues related to priority setting, resource flows, and policy processes, and the intersections of AIDS and women' health. Her work on reproductive health has involved field experience in a number of developing countries including Pakistan where she is currently based and conducts research. The volume, Global Reproductive Health and Human Rights: The Way Forward, co-edited with Mindy Jane Roseman and published by University of Pennsylvania Press is forthcoming in 2007. She is also editing a book on the gender dimensions of the global health workforce being published in 2007.

Kevin Thomas, Ph.D., graduated with a doctorate in Demography from the University of Pennsylvania in 2004. Dr. Thomas also holds a Master' degree in Demography from the University of Pennsylvania, a Master' in Development Administration from Western Michigan University, and a Bachelor' degree in Geography (with Honors) from Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone. His research interests include mortality and population health, international migration, health inequalities, and population and development interrelationships in Third World countries. Dr. Thomas was David Bell Fellow at the Center and was a Population Policy Communication Fellow of the Population Reference Bureau. He has also worked as a consultant to the United Nations Children's Fund and has presented his work in several domestic and international fora.

George Zeidenstein, is a Visiting Distinguished Fellow at the Center, where he has been teaching and mentoring graduate students since 1993. Before that, he was President and a Trustee of the Population Council for seventeen years. Earlier, Zeidenstein worked on a wide spectrum of international development issues with the Ford Foundation and the Peace Corps, including several years of residence with his wife and their two children in Nepal as Country Director of the Peace Corps and in Bangladesh as Resident Representative of the Ford Foundation. Zeidenstein has been decorated by the governments of Finland and Senegal for his international development work. He is author of a published memoir of his early life entitled, Lifelines. During his first ten years of professional life, Zeidenstein practiced corporate and securities law in New York City.