Departmental Affiliations
Center & Institute Affiliations
Ian Salas, PhD, MA, works in research and practice at the intersection of economics with demography, development, gender, and public health.
Research Interests
Family planning, contraception, reproductive health, monitoring and evaluation, program monitoring, performance analytics, data for decision making, fertility, family size, supply chain, fertility preferences, social norms, natural experiment, economic demography, economic analysis, program evaluation
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Experiences & Accomplishments
Dr. Ian Salas is an applied microeconomist whose work in teaching, research, and practice lies at the intersection of economics with demography, development, gender, and public health.
He joined the faculty of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in July 2015 as an Assistant Scientist at the Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health and a Research Economist at the William H. Gates Sr. Institute for Population and Reproductive Health. Prior to this, he was a David E. Bell Research Fellow at the Center for Population and Development Studies at Harvard University.
He is currently involved in several initiatives of the Gates Institute as a co-investigator in projects related to monitoring the demographic dividend, promoting family planning in urban poor settings in Africa and Asia, and devising tools for tracking the performance of large-scale reproductive health projects.
He received his Ph.D. in Economics in 2013 from the University of California, Irvine with a specialization in development and labor economics. He has extensive expertise in estimating economic lifecycles using the National Transfer Accounts (NTA) framework, a building block in determining the strength of the demographic dividend that a developing country can reap. He has been conducting research on the economics and financing of family planning, including the causal identification of the fertility and health effects of having a weak supply chain system for contraceptives. This work has won for him the 2014 Dorothy S. Thomas Award for best dissertation paper from the Population Association of America (PAA) and the 2015 Take Stock Hero Award from the Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition (RHSC).
Honors & Awards
Take Stock Hero Award, Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition, 2015
David E. Bell Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, Harvard Center for Population & Development Studies, 2013-2015
Dorothy S. Thomas Award for best dissertation paper, Population Association of America, 2014
Dissertation Fellowship in Population, Reproductive Health and Economic Development, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation/IIE, 2012-2013
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Most recent publications
Bwire, A, Sama, D, Mirano, J, Nyachae, P, Owino, K, Nabukeera, J, Tumuhairwe, J, Malik, M, Salas, JMIS, Mitchell, V, and Bose, K. “Boosting contraceptive uptake in urban Uganda: Older women benefit when layering adolescent and youth interventions onto existing family planning programming.” Global Health: Science and Practice 12 (Supplement 2), May 2024. https://doi.org/10.9745/GHSP-D-22-00308.
Finkle, C, Martin, K, Salas, JMIS, Mirano, J, Mwaikambo, L, Lokko, K, and Rimon, JG. “A platform for sustainable scale: The Challenge Initiative’s innovative approach to scaling proven interventions.” Global Health: Science and Practice 12 (Supplement 2), May 2024. https://doi.org/10.9745/GHSP-D-22-00167.
Duminy, J, Ezeh, A, Galea, S, Harpham, T, Montgomery, M, Salas, JMIS, Weber, D, Weimann, A, and You, D. “Demographic change and urban health: Towards a novel agenda for delivering sustainable and healthy cities for all.” F1000Research 12:1017, December 2023. https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.139309.2.
Cardona, CC, Rusatira, JC, Cheng, X, Silberg, C, Salas, JMIS, Li, Q, Bishai, D, and Rimon, JG. “Generating and capitalizing on the demographic dividend potential in sub-Saharan Africa: A conceptual framework from a systematic literature review.” Gates Open Research 4:145, September 2020. https://doi.org/10.12688/gatesopenres.13176.1.
He, P, Liu, L, Salas, JMIS, Guo, C, Cheng, Y, Chen, G, and Zheng, X. “Prenatal malnutrition and adult cognitive impairment: A natural experiment from the 1959-1961 Chinese Famine,” British Journal of Nutrition 120 (2), 2018, pp. 198-203.
Cruz, CJP, Salas, JMIS, and Cruz, GT. “Fertility Preferences in the Philippines,” Chapter 18 in Family demography in Asia: A comparative analysis of fertility preferences, edited by Stuart Gietel-Basten, John Casterline, and Minja Kim Choe, 2018, Edward Elgar.