Departmental Affiliations
Center & Institute Affiliations
Peter J. Winch, MD, MPH ’88, develops and evaluates interventions to promote health behaviors for water, sanitation, infectious diseases, and environmental sustainability.
Contact Info
615 N. Wolfe Street, Room E5608
Baltimore
Maryland
21205
US
410-502-6733
Research Interests
Qualitative Research; Health Behavior Change; Environmental Sustainability; Water, Sanitation and Hygiene; Maternal and Child Health;
Experiences & Accomplishments
Education
MPH
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
1988
MD
Queen's University
1985
BS
McMaster University, Hamilton ON Canada
1981
Overview
I am Professor in the Social and Behavioral Interventions (SBI) Program in the Department of International Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. I have been teaching since 1988, have served as academic advisor for over 100 graduate students, including over 30 PhD and DrPH, and teach courses on global health, qualitative and formative research, design of facility and community-based behavior change interventions, and applied medical anthropology. The main focus of my work, with over 270 publications, is community engagement in health, behavior change interventions, and qualitative and formative research. My current research includes 1) Behavioral and community interventions for infectious diseases, environmental sustainability, and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) – with past participation in projects on prevention and/or treatment of dengue and dengue hemorrhagic fever, malaria, schistosomiasis, childhood diarrhea and pneumonia, and Ebola; 2) Community and policy interventions to reduce greenhouse gases and criteria air pollutants; 3) Interventions for facility and community-based health care providers to improve quality of assessment, treatment and adherence to testing and treatment recommendations; 4) Facility and community-based maternal, newborn and child health interventions, maternal mental health; and 5) Youth opportunities, outdoor education and delinquency prevention.
I am co-chair of the university-wide Sustainability Leadership Council (SLC). The charge of the SLC is to provide advice and recommendations to the Provost on policies, programs, and other initiatives that will build a greater role for Johns Hopkins in teaching, research, and leadership on environmental sustainability, both locally and globally. It is also tasked with amplifying the University’s research and practice around environmental sustainability, through fostering academic collaboration and supporting the work of the Office of Sustainability. For more information, see https://sustainability.jhu.edu/about/sustainability-leadership-council/
I am co-chair of the university-wide Sustainability Leadership Council (SLC). The charge of the SLC is to provide advice and recommendations to the Provost on policies, programs, and other initiatives that will build a greater role for Johns Hopkins in teaching, research, and leadership on environmental sustainability, both locally and globally. It is also tasked with amplifying the University’s research and practice around environmental sustainability, through fostering academic collaboration and supporting the work of the Office of Sustainability. For more information, see https://sustainability.jhu.edu/about/sustainability-leadership-council/
Honors & Awards
The Dory Storms Child Survival Recognition Award, awarded by the CORE Group (www.coregroup.org), October 2011
Golden Apple Award for Teaching Excellence for online version of the course Introduction to International Health for academic year 2005-2006 (School of Public Health) and 2014-2015 (Krieger School of Arts and Sciences)
Advising, Mentoring and Teaching Recognition Award (AMTRA) for academic years 1992-1993, 1998-1999, 2003-2004, 2017-2018 Student Assembly, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
James H. Nakano Citation of the National Center for Infectious Diseases of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for outstanding paper published in 2002
Golden Apple Award for Teaching Excellence for online version of the course Introduction to International Health for academic year 2005-2006 (School of Public Health) and 2014-2015 (Krieger School of Arts and Sciences)
Advising, Mentoring and Teaching Recognition Award (AMTRA) for academic years 1992-1993, 1998-1999, 2003-2004, 2017-2018 Student Assembly, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
James H. Nakano Citation of the National Center for Infectious Diseases of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for outstanding paper published in 2002
Select Publications
My research is grouped into 5 topical areas: (1) Applied social science and vector-borne disease control - I have examined the application of social science theory and methods to the control of infectious diseases, especially vector-borne diseases such as malaria, dengue hemorrhagic fever and schistosomiasis. (2) Community health workers - I have a long-standing interest in community health workers (CHWs) as a strategy for delivering interventions to populations living far from health facilities. (3) Implementation of maternal, newborn and child health interventions - Building on Topic 1, I have examined the application of social science theory and methods to the design and evaluation of maternal and newborn health interventions. (4) Behavior change interventions for water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) - Building again on Topic 1, I have examined the application of social science theory and methods to the design and evaluation of interventions to promote WASH behaviors including handwashing with soap at key times, home water treatment, and latrine use. (5) Climate change adaptation - I am highly engaged in efforts to respond to climate change as a faculty member at Johns Hopkins University. I serve as Co-Coordinator of the MPH Concentration in Global Environmental Sustainability and Health, an academic track which offers a set of courses on climate change, food security, energy policy and the built environment. Selected publications from 2021 are listed below.
- Abaluck J, Kwong LH, Styczynski A, Haque A, Kabir MA, Bates-Jefferys E, Crawford E, Benjamin-Chung J, Raihan S, Rahman S, Benhachmi S, Bintee NZ, Winch PJ, Hossain M, Reza HM, Jaber AA, Momen SG, Rahman A, Banti FL, Huq TS, Luby SP, Mobarak AM. Impact of community masking on COVID-19: A cluster-randomized trial in Bangladesh. Science. 2022 Jan 14;375(6577):eabi9069. doi: 10.1126/science.abi9069.
- Alam MU, Sultana F, Hunter EC, Winch PJ, Unicomb L, Sarker S, Mahfuz MT, Al-Masud A, Rahman M, Luby SP. Evaluation of a menstrual hygiene intervention in urban and rural schools in Bangladesh: a pilot study. BMC Public Health. 2022 Jun 2;22(1):1100. doi: 10.1186/s12889-022-13478-1.
- Grenier L, Onguti B, Whiting-Collins LJ, Omanga E, Suhowatsky S, Winch PJ. Transforming women's and providers' experience of care for improved outcomes: A theory of change for group antenatal care in Kenya and Nigeria. PLoS One. 2022 May 3;17(5):e0265174. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0265174.
- Elafros MA, Bwalya C, Muchanga G, Mwale M, Namukanga N, Birbeck GL, Chomba M, Mugala-Mulenga A, Kvalsund MP, Sikazwe I, Saylor DR, Winch PJ. A qualitative study of factors resulting in care delays for adults with meningitis in Zambia. Trans R Soc Trop Med Hyg. 2022 Jun 2:trac049. doi: 10.1093/trstmh/trac049.
- Salem MK, Pitchik HO, Sultana J, Rahman M, Jannat KK, Luby SP, Mridha MK, Winch PJ, Fernald LCH. Prevalence of Sugar-Sweetened Food Consumption in Rural Bangladeshi Children Aged 6-24 Months. J Nutr. 2022 Jun 16:nxac119. doi: 10.1093/jn/nxac119.
Projects
Evaluation of the Acceptability, Safety and Utility of Skin to Skin Care/India
Maximizing the Effective Use of Artemisinin Combination Therapy in Sikasso Region, Mali
Evaluation of a Package of Community-Based Interventions on Maternal Health, Bangladesh
Etiology, Prevention and Treatment of Neonatal Infections in the Community
Healthy Fertility Formative Research (Postpartum Birth Spacing)
Community-based Interventions to Reduce Neonatal Mortality, Bangladesh
Newborn Thermal Care Practices in Rural India: Community-based Program to Prevent and Improve Recognition and Management of Hypothermia
Effectiveness of Zinc in the Treatment of Diarrhea
Introduction of Zinc Treatment for Childhood Diarrhea in Tanzania
Validation of neonatal Integrated Management of Childhood Illness (IMCI) and verbal autopsy
Operations research to improve newborn health and survival in the Integrated Nutrition and Health Program (INHP) II area of CARE/India
Neonatal Research Analysis: Community-based trials of maternal and neonatal health interventions in Bangladesh
Planning of Training Program on Operational and Health Services Research in Mali
Five Year Evaluation of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, & Malaria
Virtual Community Health Services - For Equity & Quality in Health Car in Mali
WSUP Research on Large-Scale Sanitation Promotion to Improve Usage
Review and evaluation of interventions to promote home water treatment
Training Program on Operational and Health Services Research on Malaria in Mali
Health Research Challenge for Impact: Subaward: ICDDR, B III
Designing and evaluating scalable integrated WASH and maternal and child health interventions in rural Bangladesh
Regional scoping study for the West Africa Capacity-building and Impact Evaluation (WACIE) Program