Program Staff

Shahira Ahmed, Program Manager

Dina Bogecho, Project Manager

Jessie Evans, Program Assistant

Laura Ferguson, Research Manager

Professor Sofia Gruskin, Director

Zyde Raad, Program Manager

Tharani Kandasamy, Visiting Research Fellow

Celso Perez, Summer Intern

Danae Roumis , Summer Intern

Shahira Ahmed, MPH, is a Program Manager at the Program on International Health and Human Rights, Harvard School of Public Health. She is involved in various projects of the Program which aim to build the evidence base of the value of attention to human rights in health and to provide tools and methods for integrating rights into public health policy, program and practice. One of her primary areas of work concerns the linkages between HIV/AIDS and gender based violence. This includes a project to increase cooperation between HIV/AIDS and gender based violence organizations through setting a common human rights and sexuality framework in collaboration with partners in China, India, Thailand, and Vietnam. From 2003-2006, she served as coordinator of the work of the UNAIDS Reference Group on HIV and Human Rights, during the period the Program held the Secretariat for this expert advisory group. Prior to this position, she worked as a research coordinator at the Women and Public Policy Program (WAPPP) at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. Originally from the Sudan, Ms. Ahmed also researches and writes on the human rights, cultural, and health implications of female genital cutting.  She has a Masters in Public Health degree with an International Health concentration from the Boston University School of Public Health.

To contact Shahira, click here.

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Dina Bogecho , JD, LL.M, MPH, is a human rights lawyer and a Project Manager at the Program on International Health and Human Rights, Harvard School of Public Health. Her research seeks to advance sexual and reproductive health and rights and linkages between human rights and public health, with a particular focus on HIV/AIDS. She recently received her MPH degree from the Harvard School of Public Health where she focused on international health and community-based programming. Ms. Bogecho previously worked as a human rights lawyer for Population Action International in Washington DC where she investigated and wrote about the impact of US policies on women’s reproductive health and rights around the world. Previously, she worked at the Center for Reproductive Rights in New York, where her work focused on women’s reproductive rights in the context of HIV prevention programmes. She received her law degree from the University of Toronto, Canada, and her Master’s in Law from Columbia University, New York, where she specialized in international human rights law, focusing on sexual and reproductive rights. Currently, Ms. Bogecho is involved in research and writing on a range of substantive issues, including the human rights implications of scaling-up access to ARVs and rights-based approaches to public health programming in a variety of areas.

To contact Dina, click here.

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Jessie Evans , BA, is the Program Assistant at the Program on International Health and Human Rights. Ms. Evans earned her Bachelor of Arts in Diplomacy and World Affairs, with an emphasis on International Organizations and Human Rights from Occidental College in Los Angeles, May 2006. She previously worked as an intern at the United Nations Headquarters in New York for the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, Africa Division, focusing much of her work on the UN Missions in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Her past research has primarily focused on issues of transitional justice and organized truth telling, with field research in Argentina and South Africa. Ms. Evans’ research interests include addressing the impact of human rights movements and structures in countries in transition, focusing on the use of a rights-based approach to health, capacity building, and policy development.

To contact Jessie, click here.

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Laura Ferguson , MS, MA, is the Research Manager at the Program on International Health and Human Rights. Her research focuses on identifying methods for strengthening the evidence base of the added value of human rights in health policies and programmes, which includes exploring the linkages between HIV/AIDS and sexual and reproductive health and the intersections of Gender-Based Violence and HIV/AIDS. A key component of these efforts is ensuring that the findings are widely disseminated and used to inform policy and programming. Ms. Ferguson earned her MSc in Population and International Health from the Harvard School of Public Health in June 2005. She previously worked as a Programme Manager at AMREF UK where she managed a portfolio of community-based health projects in East and Southern Africa. She spent extended periods of time in Africa collaborating with partners, helping to build the capacity of her local colleagues, and designing new projects to tackle a broad range of issues including water and sanitation, HIV/AIDS, and women’s human rights. She has also worked in Central and South America on health education in schools, access to reproductive health services and research on child health.

To contact Laura, click here.

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Sofia Gruskin , JD, MIA, is Director of the Program on International Health and Human Rights, and Associate Professor in the Department of Population and International Health at the Harvard School of Public Health. Her work emphasizes the conceptual, methodological, policy and practice implications of linking health to human rights, with particular attention to reproductive and sexual health, HIV and AIDS, women, gender issues, children, and vulnerable populations. She has extensive experience working with  non-governmental, governmental and intergovernmental organizations working in the fields of health and human rights around the world.  Ms. Gruskin works closely with WHO, UNAIDS, more recently with UNFPA, in addition to other UN partners to strengthen the health and human rights research, policy and programmatic agenda. Current efforts include clarifying the value of human rights for making public health work more effective through the design and testing of models and tools in a range of countries. This includes establishment of frameworks for undertaking rights-based planning and programming in the areas of child and adolescent health, and maternal and neo-natal health, as well as working with national and global indicators to assess the extent of implementation and quality of HIV policies and programs from a human rights perspective.  She is the principal investigator for a Ford Foundation funded project on HIV/AIDS and Gender Based Violence intended to serve as a model to develop and strengthen the linkages among those who work on issues of sexuality, HIV/AIDS, and gender-based violence using a human rights framework. Ms. Gruskin is Associate Editor of The American Journal of Public Health and Global Public Health, lead editor of Perspectives on Health and Human Rights published by Taylor & Francis (Routledge) in May 2005, and served as editor-in chief of the international journal Health and Human Rights from 1994-2006. She was Chair of the UNAIDS Reference Group on HIV and Human Rights from 2003-2006 and continues to serve as a member. She serves on numerous national and international boards and committees, and is a permanent member of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Behavioral and Social Consequences of HIV/AIDS study section.

For a full bio and a list of publications, click here.

To contact Sofia, click here.

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Zyde Raad, MS, is a Program Manager at the Program on International Health and Human Rights. He is involved with various projects which aim to build the evidence base of the value of attention to human rights in health in the areas of child and adolescent health, the human rights obligations of the pharmaceutical industry, sexual and reproductive health, and HIV/AIDS. His research focuses primarily on the use of human rights to strengthen child survival strategies and health programs. This includes working on several projects with WHO/CAH and UNICEF to create tools for undertaking rights-based child and adolescent health programming and to examine the impact of child health legislation at country-level. Prior to this position, he worked as a researcher at Children’s Hospital Oakland, developing and testing novel meningococcal vaccines. He has also worked at a free clinic in California where he coordinated and provided urgent care services for homeless and uninsured patients. His other interests include the legal and public health dimensions of economic sanctions and depleted uranium munitions. He has a Masters in Population and International Health from the Harvard School of Public Health.

To contact Zyde, click here.

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Tharani Kandasamy, MD, MsC PhD candidate is working with the Program on International Health and Human Rights as visiting research fellow in May- June 2008. She is currently pursuing graduate studies at the University of Toronto, collaboratively in the departments of Health Policy Management and Evaluation (HPME) and the Joint Center for Bioethics. For her dissertation work, she is working with the Department of Reproductive Health Research, at WHO evaluating: 1) the Quality of Emergency Obstetric Care and 2) Utilization of Antenatal care services by Returning Refugees in Kabul. During her PIHHR fellowship, she will build on this work and examine the role of human rights in advancing safe motherhood, with a particular focus on refugee populations. Tharani holds a medical degree from the University of Toronto and is completing her postgraduate surgical training there. Her research interests are global health and health systems research with a focus on equity, bioethics and knowledge translation. She has worked on numerous projects in Nepal, South Africa and Sri Lanka, and most recently worked with the WHO looking at building surgical obstetric capacity in South India.

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Celso Perez is a summer intern at the Program on International Health and Human Rights. Mr. Perez is currently an undergraduate at Boston College majoring in Biochemistry and Theology. He has previously worked as a research intern at the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) in Geneva, Switzerland, identifying, summarizing, and classifying relevant technical and policy resources for the UNAIDS website. His academic research focuses on sexual ethics, bioethics, medicine and ethics, and health care and human rights. He is currently working on his undergraduate thesis which will address engaging a Christian sexual ethic to provide better sexual and reproductive health in religious universities in the United States.

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Danae Roumis is a summer intern at the Program on International Health and Human Rights. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology at the University of Chicago this June. Her honors thesis explores the political ecology of endemic malaria in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in Tanzania, and was inspired by field research she conducted there in 2006. She has also worked with Project HEALTH, an organization which seeks to ameliorate health disparities in the US by attending to the social determinants of health. Her research interests involve the use of rights- based approaches to policies addressing the intersections of health, environment, and development.

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