PhD Students

I am a social and behavioral researcher focusing on evaluating and improving sexual violence (SV) prevention programs domestically and globally. Much of my experience involves working with adolescent males in Sub-Saharan Africa and adult transgender women in the U.S. I chose the PFRH Department at Hopkins because of the robust curriculum, the numerous faculty that work in the violence field, and the collaboration across departments and schools. I work with amazing and supportive faculty across BSPH, SON, and SOM on various SV projects ranging from individual- to institutional- to policy-level interventions and evaluation.

I am a second-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Population, Family, and Reproductive Health (PFRH). I am originally from Bangladesh. After graduating from the Department of Population Sciences, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh, I worked as a research associate at the BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD), BRAC University, Bangladesh. Later, I joined as a faculty member in the Department of Population Sciences, University of Dhaka. I am now fascinated with blending the knowledge of demography and public health and translating research into policy. I'm inclined to work on population and health, more specifically, reducing maternal and child mortality (reaching zero preventable death) - still a global unfinished agenda in many developing countries, e.g., Bangladesh. 

My current research takes a multi-methods approach, exploring pathways to severe maternal morbidity in the United States. My broader research interests are in maternal health system and midwifery workforce development, the political economy of maternal health, global trends in cesarean birth, and participatory action research.  A midwife by training, after a decade in clinical work I was drawn to PFRH for its excellent faculty, its many opportunities to be involved in rigorous research spanning both the life course and the globe, and its support for clinician-researchers. Addressing complex public health problems requires expertise from many specialties and the possibilities for collaboration at BSPH are truly endless. Whatever aspect of my work I want to explore, there will almost certainly be someone at BSPH who has been thinking about it for years! My future goal is a multi-pronged career involving scholarly research, government consultation and advocacy for the development of salutogenic and sustainable maternal health policy and systems, and the education of the next generation of midwives and public health professionals. There is so much work to be done for women and birthing people, both in the U.S. and across the globe.

My research focuses on racial and ethnic disparities in severe maternal morbidity (SMM) and its association with postpartum mental health conditions. I have always wanted to be in women’s and reproductive health / maternal health since I was a young child. I believe that the pregnancy and postpartum period are some of the most vulnerable times in an individual’s life and the health issues associated need to be well understood so that prevention and intervention can occur and lead to healthy outcomes.

I chose Bloomberg School of Public Health because it was the only school that offered the exact area of interest / track that I wanted to pursue. BSPH has some of the best faculty in the space that I wanted to work,  and thankfully I have been able to work with them since entering the program.

My experiences as a patient, coupled with my work as a sexual health educator and doula, ignited my passion for public health. This journey has deepened my commitment to exploring how communities and public health professionals can support adolescents by providing them with vital reproductive and sexual health information, equipping them to make informed decisions throughout their lives. I chose the Bloomberg School of Public Health for its strong focus on rigorous scientific research and its role as a global leader in public health.  I was drawn to the Department of Population, Family, and Reproductive Health for its emphasis on the life course framework, the Center for Adolescent Health housed within the Department, and my faculty advisor, Dr. Powell.  I am interested in the link between early menstrual health education, long-term health outcomes, and healthcare experiences.  I aim to influence policy to become more inclusive and responsive to the specific health and educational needs of Black youth.

My research interests lie in applying a life-course perspective to issues of adolescent sexual and reproductive health and women’s empowerment. Specifically, I am interested in assessing quantitative measures of adolescent girls and young women’s sexual and reproductive autonomy in low- and middle-income countries, with a particular interest in humanitarian settings. I am currently working on research with the Performance Monitoring for Action (PMA) project, the Global Early Adolescent Study, and other projects in PFRH. Prior to starting the PhD program at Johns Hopkins, I obtained my SM from the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and worked as a policy advisor for Population Reference Bureau (PRB). 

I chose PFRH for my PhD because of the Department’s life-course approach to addressing public health issues and strong training in both quantitative and qualitative analysis regarding women’s sexual and reproductive health. The Bloomberg School also offered numerous opportunities to collaborate with professors and projects across different departments and schools, as well as a certificate program in health in humanitarian settings. Now in the program, more than anything else, I appreciate the supportive environment created by the students, faculty, and staff in the PFRH department. After graduation, I plan to continue research applying a life-course perspective to issues of sexual and reproductive health and building knowledge to improve the health and well-being of women and girls.

I am interested in exploring the intersection of nutrition and disability health across the life course using qualitative and mixed methods. Specifically, I am interested in understanding the parenting and infant feeding experiences of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. My experiences working with disabled persons and having ADHD myself are deeply connected to my commitment to disability justice and advocacy. I received my MSPH in the Department of PFRH and chose to continue my PhD in the Department because of the research opportunities aligned with my interests and supportive network of faculty and mentors.

My primary interest is applying a gender analysis lens to health disparities and health service research in women’s health, and reproductive and sexual health. I chose the Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health at BSPH for its strong training on both my topics of interest and quantitative methodologies, including in observational causal inference designs in social sciences. Currently, I work in collaboration with faculty across departments at the Bloomberg School and the School of Medicine on research examining intimate partner violence, integrating gender analyses within international monitoring and evaluation mechanisms, and reproductive and maternal health. 

My research focuses on understanding how the availability and quality of family planning services can influence contraceptive uptake, method choice, and continuation among women in sub-Saharan Africa. Prior to coming to Hopkins, I worked as a researcher in Tanzania, which enabled me to engage in projects that allowed me to see firsthand the scarcity of health services, particularly in hard-to-reach settings. Currently, I’m working on a Global Early Adolescent Study (GEAS) research project aimed to understand how empowerment trajectories shape sexual and reproductive health outcomes among very young adolescents in Ethiopia. I also recently began work focused on adapting the Desire to Avoid Pregnancy (DAP) scale to improve the measurement of women’s and men’s prospective pregnancy preferences in low-resource, high-fertility settings in sub-Saharan Africa. I was drawn to the Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health (PFRH) because it has a long history of advancing cutting-edge research and has pioneered frameworks, methods, and approaches to better contextualize the lived experiences of the most vulnerable populations. Over the last year, I’ve had the privilege of serving as a Department Student Association (DSA) representative for PFRH, liaising between the study body, and the department’s faculty and staff on aspects related to student life, academics and wellbeing. In this role I have learned that the PFRH community is one where students are seen and valued. The faculty, administrators and staff genuinely care about student wellbeing, and are receptive to both feedback and criticism that enable them to build a better departmental community where students can thrive. It’s how PFRH centers students—their voices, ideas, and wellbeing—that makes this community like none other. This is what makes the PFRH community special, and what I like most about being part of it! 

Social policy and anti-poverty policy are my home sweet homes, but public health study deepens my ability to articulate through my research how people really socioeconomic marginalization – it isn’t just economically, it’s in their very bodies and beings.

I apply my training as a social scientist to understand the implications of environmental inequity in gynecologic cancer and disorder epidemiology. I chose it during my PhD apprenticeship when I interned in clinical research with the Gynecologic Oncology Service at Johns Hopkins Medicine. Public health context is essential in the clinical treatment and prevention of GYN cancer, as well as implementation of interventions. It is my honor to do my tiny part as plank of the bridge to that contextual understanding for clinicians and medical practitioners, and I do it for all those people of color who I have personally met (and those I’ve yet to see or serve) who unnecessarily died sooner than their white counterparts.

I am interested in learning about individuals' experiences to understand how to improve health surveys and programs. Currently, I am working with Performance Monitoring for Action (PMA) data examining factors associated with contraception dynamics.  I wish to understand how we can provide better service to individuals seeking contraception.

I am a physician and earned my MPH and certificate in health economics from the Bloomberg School. My current research focuses on the role of men’s egalitarian gender ideologies in their fertility preferences and contraception decision-making behaviors. Over the last nine years, I have worked as a clinical practitioner, public health advocate, and researcher. I worked as a technical advisor and program officer at the William H. Gates Sr. Institute for Population and Reproductive Health, where I led the team who developed the Demographic Dividend Effort Index, and co-chaired the Scientific and Demographic Dividend Subcommittees of the International Conference on Family Planning. I was one of the first 40 awardees of the "120 Under 40: The New Generation of Family Planning Leaders," recognizing my public health practice work through the Healthy People Rwanda and the International Youth Alliance for Family Planning. I decided to pursue my PhD in PFRH due to the global nature of the work done by the faculty in the department, and the dedication of the faculty to generate new knowledge that informs policy to improve population health across the life course.

Currently, my research interests are centered on South Asian experiences of sexual and reproductive health care. I am particularly interested in experiences of care amongst the diaspora and how their experiences may impact their care-seeking behavior (and preferences), self-image, and sexual and reproductive goals (and vice versa). I've also been involved in research spanning from collaborative population-level measure development work to assess sexual and reproductive wellbeing to smaller qualitative and quantitative assessments of contraceptive and abortion care experiences and care provision. My work and research interests are informed by a reproductive justice and human rights lens, as well as my own identity/background as a Desi and proud daughter of immigrants. 

Read Shashi's Student Spotlight

Nicole Stamas is a PhD student concentrating on Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health and Epidemiology Research Methods within the Department of Population, Family, and Reproductive Health. Nicole’s research interests include menstrual health, reproductive disorders, gender-based violence, and gender equity and empowerment among women and girls globally. Nicole is passionate about improving the measurement and analysis of menstrual experiences and reproductive disorders to inform research, interventions, and programming. She is also interested in the relationship between gender-based violence and reproductive outcomes. Nicole’s previous research work includes measurement of menstrual health among secondary schoolgirls in Uganda, menstrual suppression among female servicemembers in the United States, and real-world data analysis for pharmacoepidemiologic studies. Currently, Nicole is contributing to work on the Performance Monitoring for Action Agile study on menstrual product access, contraceptive use, and experiences of gender-based violence among adolescent girls and young women in Nairobi, Kenya.  

With a human rights and reproductive justice lens, I explore the social and interpersonal factors that impact sexual health, reproductive health, and childbearing trajectories. I have experience with both direct and indirect measurement methods for estimating sensitive or stigmatized behaviors and experiences such as sex, family planning, abortion, infertility, reproductive coercion, and intimate partner violence. I received my MSPH from the Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health (PFRH) in 2022 and am pursuing a PhD in the same department. I chose PFRH for both my MSPH and PhD because of their focus on interdisciplinary research and advocacy. I currently work for Performance Monitoring for Action (PMA) and am involved in both quantitative and qualitative research.

I earned my MSPH from PFRH with a Women’s, Sexual, and Reproductive Health concentration. I have been a research assistant on various projects with the Early Childhood Services Research Program, the Maryland Department of Health, and Performance Monitoring for Action, and also served as SOURCE Service Scholar. I am a TA in many classes, including introductory public health courses at both the undergraduate and graduate level. My research interests involve investigating the impact of community-level social, structural, and environmental determinants of health on children’s life course outcomes.

My primary research interests include adverse and positive childhood experiences (ACEs & PCEs) and systems-level solutions to promote health and well-being across the life course. My dissertation is focused on the effects of comorbid ACEs and PCEs among bereaved youth on institutional engagement and mental health outcomes in adulthood. Prior to coming to Hopkins, I worked at the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) as a Program Officer in the Public and Patient Engagement Department supporting research engagement practices in the PCOR workforce. I completed my dual MPH and MSW degrees at Washington University in St. Louis School of Social Work and BS in Psychology at Lafayette college.

My research lies at the intersection of adolescent and school health. Specifically, I am interested in the implementation science of school health frameworks and how school environments influence adolescent health behaviors and outcomes. These interests stem from my years as a high school English teacher in Baltimore, and from my ongoing work with the CDC’s Division of Adolescent and School Health. I chose to pursue doctoral studies with PFRH to further develop skills and expertise in school-based program design, implementation, and evaluation alongside faculty who work closely with Baltimore City Public Schools—the place where it all started for me! I currently work as a research assistant for ‘Nobody Asked Me’, a collaborative research project between JHSOE and JHSPH that explores young Baltimoreans’ experiences living and attending school in the city.