Research and Practice

Performance Monitoring for Action Ethiopia (PMA Ethiopia)
Linnea Zimmerman 
PMA Ethiopia is cornerstone in health research, a collaborative effort between Addis Ababa University, the Federal Ministry of Health, and Johns Hopkins University. It's more than just a survey—it's a reliable source of crucial data on maternal, infant, and reproductive health. Through this initiative, insights are gathered to drive meaningful improvements in healthcare policies and programs, all aimed at enhancing the well-being of Ethiopian women and children.

Early marriage and early childbearing among conflict-affected and displaced adolescents in Bangladesh and Yemen (EMEC)
Courtland Robinson, Linnea Zimmerman
The EMEC project collects data on how humanitarian emergencies affect family formation, including marriage and childbearing among adolescents aged 15-24. Its goal is to understand the impact of these emergencies on marriage, childbearing, and the need for family planning among adolescents. This data helps improve humanitarian responses and reproductive health outcomes for young people.

Estimation of Unaccompanied Children in Disaster Situations
Court Robinson
In most humanitarian emergencies little is known about the most vulnerable children – those who are separated from parents or unaccompanied by a family member– including population size, age/sex distribution, etc. Working with Save the Children-UK and the Child Protection Working Group (a global forum) this study aims to develop better estimations of the numbers of unaccompanied and separated children in emergencies and disasters.

Global Age Patterns of Under-Five Mortality
Li Liu
To improve our understanding of age patterns of under-5 mortality by gathering the largest database to date on high-quality global mortality information by detailed age from birth until age 5, by sex. This database will serve as a basis for generating models summarizing regularities about how under-5 mortality is distributed by detailed age in human populations. These models will then be used for evaluating and correcting under-5 mortality information by detailed age in less-developed countries.

Maternal Mortality Estimation from Survey Data: Quality Assessment
Saifuddin Ahmed
The study is examining the quality of sibling history data in Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) and its impact on the estimation of maternal mortality. DHS data are the main source of MMR estimation in developing countries, where complete vital registration data are not available.

Improving Age- and Cause-Specific Under-Five Mortality Rates (ACSU5MR) by Systematically Assessing and Accounting Measurement Errors to Inform Child Survival Decision Making in Low Income Countries
Li Liu
This study aims to improve ACSU5MR by 1) comprehensively assessing and incorporating measurement errors in ACSU5M from periodic household surveys; 2) evaluating the impacts of data collection frequency on accuracy of ACSU5M in sample registration systems; and 3) developing unified accessible statistical methodology for ACSU5M estimation and dissemination.

Unpacking patterns of excess COVID-19 mortality for children and young people in the US
Li Liu
This study aims 1) to understand the relative impact of COVID-19 mortality on children and young people (CYP) in reference to adult populations; 2) to assess direct and indirect impacts of COVID-19 on the cause-specific mortality of CYP in the United States from 2020 to 2021; and 3) to explore associations between direct and indirect COVID-19 mortality among CYP and policy factors. 

Child and Adolescent Causes of Death Estimation (CA-CODE)
Li Liu
This project aims: to improve the estimation of neonatal, child and adolescent causes of deaths globally through methodological innovations, country engagements, estimates harmonization, data exploration, and results dissemination. 

Rapid Mortality Mobile Phone Surveys during COVID-19 (RAMMPS) 
Li Liu
During COVID-19, the impact on vulnerable populations including newborns and pregnant women is unknown although models show that both the direct and indirect impact of COVID-19 could be substantial. The RAMMPS project aims to get better estimates on excess mortality by developing and validating RAMMPS methods for mortality estimation in LLMICS, improving use of RAMMPS for estimating excess mortality during COVID-19 in different LLMIC settings, and evaluating RAMMPS as a cost-effective approach for mortality surveillance beyond COVID-19.   

The fertility, maternal health, and infant health consequences of reproductive policy change
Alison Gemmill, Suzanne Bell
This study uses causal methods to estimate the impact of the Dobbs decision on fertility and maternal and infant health outcomes over time and by socioeconomic subgroups in states that recently banned or restricted abortion services. This work will produce results that can inform time-sensitive reproductive health policy decision making in states in the coming years.

Changes in pregnancy outcomes among high-risk pregnancies post-Dobbs: An interrupted time series analysis of hospital discharge data
Suzanne Bell, Alison Gemmill, Anne Burke
This study aims to understand how abortion bans imposed following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization impact pregnancy care among hospitalized high-risk pregnancies involving lethal congenital anomalies, and how abortion bans impact maternal outcomes via changes in pregnancy care among hospitalized high-risk pregnancies for whom intervention to end the pregnancy is medically indicated.

Advancing Understanding and Measurement of Infertility and Related Fears and Stigma in Low-Resource Countries
Suzanne Bell, Caroline Moreau, Philip Anglewicz
This study seeks to improve infertility estimation in low-resource settings and develop new psychometrically valid quantitative measures to inform strategies to reduce infertility-related stigma and fear.