Ongoing Projects

Lead Faculty: William Weiss

Develop an approach of collecting and analyzing critical nutrition data within the Middle Easter and North Africa Region that focus on the underlying and proximate determinants of child and women's undernutrion. UNICEF’s newly introduced EC-FIES indicators and additional indicators will be collected by leveraging digital platforms in 2-3 countries with complex humanitarian contexts.
The outcome of this study is to build a fast and reliable data source for both programming and advocacy to improve emergency response by better identifying malnutrition hot spots. It will give a model for application in the humanitarian context in MENARO and globally.

Lead Faculty: Shannon Doocy

Chad is grappling with severe food insecurity and high malnutrition rates, stemming from interrelated determinants of poverty, political instability, conflict and displacement, chronic food shortages, and climate crises such as frequent droughts and floods. As of mid-2024, 3.4 million people faced acute hunger and 1.75 million children under the age of five suffered from acute malnutrition. In response, the World Food Programme (WFP) has been providing nutritional assistance through specially formulated foods (SFFs) for the treatment and prevention of acute malnutrition. However, logistical challenges in delivering SFFs have hindered their effectiveness. As a result, WFP has introduced cash-based transfer (referred to as C4P) approaches to improve food security and nutrition, targeting vulnerable groups through cash and social behavioral change (SBC) interventions. Pregnant and lactating women and children that are 6-23 months of age are eligible for the program. The proposed evaluation aims to quantify the effectiveness of the SFF and C4P interventions on women’s and children’s dietary quality and wasting prevention.

Lead Faculty: Paul Spiegel

Identifying gaps and challenges created or worsened by the war and providing actionable recommendations for long-term, resilient healthcare system development.

Lead Faculty: Shatha Elnakib

Provide support for midwifery research in 3-4 countries in the Arab region.

Lead Faculty: Kathryn Falb

This project will adapt and pilot test Growing Strong Together (GST), an evidence-based family strengthening program originally developed for families reintegrating after youth involvement with armed groups, to support unaccompanied migrant youth and their sponsors in the United States. Working in partnership with Everstand's Caminos program, the research team will use human-centered design workshops with frontline personnel to adapt the GST curriculum for post-release services, addressing the unique challenges these youth face including risks of gang involvement and trafficking during the critical transition period after federal custody. The project aims to strengthen family functioning, prevent violence, and promote successful integration into sponsor families and communities by leveraging existing service infrastructure and building on the expertise of case managers, therapists, and other frontline personnel already supporting this vulnerable population.

Lead Faculty: Shatha Elnakib

This will include support on midwifery and on MPDSR

Lead Faculty: Jill Owczarzak

Access to care among PLWH who are also affected by conflict and displacement

Lead Faculty: Shatha Elnakib

Understand the behavioral and social drivers (BeSD) of vaccination

Lead Faculty: Mary, Meighan

The aim on this study is to understand Arab women’s experience in accessing and receiving health care during pregnancy and childbirth in Washington DC, Maryland, and Virginia (the DMV).

Lead Faculty: Chiara Altare

Building upon previous work, the overall aim is to improve EMRO monitoring capacity. The specific objectives are threefold: 
i) Facilitate discussion at national and regional level to reflect on the design, implementation and sustainability of the regional monitoring emergency framework in the pilot countries;
ii) Propose adjustments to the approach to ensure relevance and feasibility of the initiative in pilot and additional countries. This includes reviewing data collection methods, integration processes, and reporting mechanisms to address identified challenges; 
iii) Define mechanisms to ensure the updated initiative will strengthen evidence-based decision making for emergency response at both country and regional levels.

Lead Faculty: Paul Spiegel

The study objectives are threefold:
1. Modelling Displacement: use AI and other data modeling tools to make projections about population displacement trends at subnational levels in Mali. 
2. Understand the impacts of climate change & displacement on health: estimate the health needs of the projected population, taking into account existing vulnerabilities and risk factors, as well as worsening impacts of climate change on health. 
3. Public Health and response planning: develop preparedness and response plans to meet the projected population’s health needs and assess existing and needed health systems capacity to meet these needs. 
 

Lead Faculty: Shannon Doocy

The overarching objective of the study is to identify lessons learned and best practices related to the sustainability of SPIR’s outcomes, along with their barriers and facilitators to those selected lessons and practices, to develop design recommendations and implementation priorities with strategic value for improving the sustainability of future RFSAs. Specific research aims include:

Aim 1. Identify SPIR lessons learned and best practices activities, the pathways to and persistence of outcomes, (un)intended consequences of SPIR activities in the three sectors of focus (Agriculture/Natural Resource Management (NRM); Livelihoods, and Gender/Youth).

Aim 2. Summarize barriers and facilitators of sustainability for selected sectors [and activity with outcomes/impacts] by the four sustainability domains of resources, capacity, motivation and linkages. 

Aim 3. Identify commonalities and differences of SPIR outcomes and their barriers/facilitators between SPIR and the and experiences of other RSFAs and similar multi-sectoral food security programs in Ethiopia and globally with a strategic focus on PSNP system development.

Aim 4. Develop recommendations to improve design, implementation, and close out of future RSFAs that result in more effective interventions leading to higher graduation rates among PSNP clients.

Lead Faculty: Kate Falb

American Indian adolescent girls face significant challenges concerning their mental health, often exacerbated by historical trauma and systemic inequalities born from racist and sexist settler colonial practices. These cultural factors, including the loss of cultural identity and connection to ancestral lands, can contribute to feelings of isolation and depression among American Indian adolescent girls. Moreover, the intergenerational transmission of trauma resulting from colonialism, forced assimilation policies, and the legacy of boarding schools, which included the specific targeting of girls within historical-cultural assimilation practices, given girls’ central roles in building the next generation of American Indian families and communities continues to impact their mental well-being. This mixed methods, tribally driven participatory research study aims to understand the feasibility, acceptability, and perceived effectiveness, including pathways of change of a strengths-based, intergenerational program (Girl Societies) for American Indian adolescent girls that aims to revitalize protective matriarchal cultural practices.

Lead Faculty: Kate Falb

This two-year research study aims to: (1) understand the interconnected sexual and reproductive health (SRH) and gender-based violence experiences (GBV) needs and priorities faced by older women and women and girls with disabilities in humanitarian settings, including a focus on conflict-related sexual violence; (2) identify modifiable barriers across the humanitarian system to better meet their needs in varied humanitarian settings; and (3) illustrate promising practices and collaboratively develop new strategies to address their prioritized needs. By gathering insights from these local organizations and actors, the study seeks to inform policy and practice to better support older women and women and girls with disabilities’ rights, health, and well-being in crisis situations. The study will tentatively employ qualitative methods in the first year through remote in-depth interviews and, in the second year, will partner with a local organization to co-develop prioritized programming models identified through the qualitative research through collaborative, participatory workshops.

Lead Faculty: Paul Spiegel

The Johns Hopkins University Nexus convening award will support three series to convening to improve anticipatory and adaptive humanitarian programming, and to inform the global humanitarian policy agenda in the face of climate change, conflict, displacement, and health to prevent calamity and promote resilience before a crisis occurs by harnessing the potential lifesaving power of data science and emerging technologies. Specifically, the convenings will: 1) Map and magnify JHU Efforts: Mapping actors and initiatives related to climate change, conflict, displacement, and humanitarian crises across the university; 2) Data for action: Analyzing the right data at the right time to improve humanitarian decision- making; and, 3) Develop the Climate Change, Conflict, Displacement and Humanitarian Crises Lab.

Lead Faculty: Paul Spiegel

Reactive vaccination campaigns aim to rapidly increase the population level of immunity and reduce the number of susceptible people who could be infected with the circulating disease, therefore reducing the spread of the pathogen. However, the implementation of reactive campaign faces a variety of challenges that delay or completely hinder their implementation. This study aims to identify key barriers and enablers to the implementation of reactive vaccination campaigns after an outbreak has been declared and formulate solutions to improve timeliness and implementation of such campaigns.

The current Israel-Gaza war, which began on October 7, 2023, has had an immense humanitarian impact. This project aims to provide projections of excess mortality for different causes of excess mortality (mortality modules) in Gaza under three scenarios: 1) ceasefire, 2) status quo (continuation of conditions observed during the period of the war preceding the projections, and 3) escalation. These estimations will provide decision-makers and responders information to plan for and respond to different scenarios. The data may also be used to inform diplomatic efforts addressing this conflict. 

The current projection is for February 7 – August 6, 2024. Over the next five months, the project expects to publish periodic updates of the projections. The scenarios may be altered to reflect the evolution of the crisis, improved data or revised models.

The project is an independent academic collaboration between researchers from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and the Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health at Johns Hopkins University and is funded by the UK Humanitarian Innovation Hub. 

For the complete report and more information about the project, visit https://gaza-projections.org 

The findings do not necessarily represent the views of the funder, the Johns Hopkins University, or the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

The authors are solely responsible for the analysis and interpretation.

The funder had no role in shaping the analyses, this report, or other scientific outputs of the project.

This publication is partly based on third-party-generated data herein analyzed and interpreted, and it is not intended to question or challenge such data. 

Any geographical entities or references to armed conflict events are only for the purpose of the analysis/report, and do not imply acknowledgment or endorsement of facts relating to these geographical entities or events.

Lead Faculty: Shannon Doocy

JHSPH will provide research services to WFP in both humanitarian and development contexts with the aim of characterizing outcomes of WFP interventions and promoting evidence-based programming.

Lead Faculty: Jessica Fanzo

To empower civil society groups to bring about a right to food approach to food systems in the four countries in which it is taking place; to bring about food systems grounded in the right to food rights

Lead Faculty: Shannon Doocy

Act as the research learning partner for a Catholic Relief Services-led consortium working to provide emergency food assistance (in-kind and cash transfers) in Ethiopia.

Lead Faculty: Courtland Robinson

The research aims to estimate prevalence rates and risk factors associated with trafficking and forced labor in the brick kiln industry in Pakistan. We are one of seven grantees worldwide conducting these studies which will not only provide estimates of forced labor for policy and program interventions but also compare and contrast estimation methodologies to improve global measures of human trafficking and forced labor in low and middle income country settings.

Lead Faculty: Nancy Glass

The study provides a unique opportunity with a proven Congolese partner to examine the combined and synergistic effects of two proven structural interventions; 1) Rabbits for Resilience (RFR), youth-led economic empowerment program; and 2) Indashyikirwa (IK), a couples/parents-based gender equality program on adolescent mental health. Using a clustered randomized controlled trial with three groups (RFR only, IK only, RFR + IK), we examine the combined and synergistic effects of the interventions and the pathways through which RFR and IK improves adolescent mental health.

Lead Faculty: C. Nicholas Cuneo

The HEAL Refugee Health and Asylum Collaborative is a partnership among Johns Hopkins University, Esperanza Center/Catholic Charities, Asylee Women Enterprise (AWE), and Loyola University Maryland to expand access to responsive health care and supportive services for immigrant survivors of torture and trauma seeking refuge in the U.S.

www.healasylum.org

Lead Faculty: Nicholas C. Cuneo

The JHU-IRAP Medical-Legal Partnership at the US-Mexico Border supports ongoing remote forensic physical and psychological evaluations of asylum seekers in Ciudad Juárez whose legal cases are being supported by IRAP. This service delivery is coupled with ongoing research on conditions at the US-Mexico border and the effect of a dynamic border policy landscape on the health and human rights of migrants.

Lead Faculty: Shannon Doocy

Act as the research learning partner for a Catholic Relief Services led consortium working to provide humanitarian assistance and promote resilience in Ethiopia.

Lead Faculty: Shannon Doocy

Provide technical support for the evaluation of Save the Child cash transfer and child protection programming in ongoing humanitarian responses in Lebanon and Colombia.

Lead Faculty: Paul Spiegel

The Ensuring Quality Access and Learning (EQUAL) for Mothers and Newborns in Conflict-affected Contexts Consortium will generate operationally-relevant, demand-driven evidence to reduce maternal and perinatal mortality and morbidities in low-income, conflict-affected contexts (LI-CAC), and ensure translation of evidence to practice and policy using consortium partner influence, networks, and capacity strengthening (CS) efforts.

https://equalresearch.org/

Lead Faculty: Sarah Murray, Karine Le Roch, Amanda Nguyen

We are conducting a randomized controlled study accompanied by the collection of mixed methods implementation data to assess the effectiveness of ACF's Baby Friendly Spaces (BFS) program delivered to Rohingya refugee mothers in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. Although psychosocial support programs are implemented globally to refugees, there is a lack of formal scientific research documenting evidence of their impact on caregivers of young children or providing guidance for their effective implementation. Responding to this gap in knowledge, we aim to: evaluate the extent to which BFS services contribute to improved maternal and child health outcomes for forcibly displaced lactating Rohingya mothers and their young children; examine key implementation factors related to these outcomes (e.g., fidelity, sustainability); and explore what would be needed to adapt this program for delivery to Bangladeshi mothers and their young children seeking services in host community clinics within Cox’s Bazar.

Lead Faculty: Paul Spiegel

Lancet Migration will work in a complementary manner with multilateral agencies, non-governmental organisations, faith groups, donors, and governments to provide a platform for documenting progress at global, regional and national level, towards better health for all migrants, host populations and those left behind, based on sound indicators and robust data. We will build on our existing networks and collaborators to consolidate regional hubs, comprised of academic, policy and operational partners at national, regional and global level, and work closely with existing policy work on migration and health, to transform evidence into action.
Lancet Migration will have two primary objectives:
1. Undertake and support high quality, multidisciplinary scientific research to address the evidence gaps in the field of migration and health; and
2. Stimulate public engagement, advocacy, and policy shaping activities to transform evidence into action.

https://migrationhealth.org/

Lead Faculty: Andrea Wirtz

We intend to understand more experiences of violence among Latinx immigrants in the US and methods to better engage this population in health research. Specific Aims include: 1. To develop and adapt quantitative survey instruments to assess interpersonal violence among Latino immigrants. Qualitative methods (focus groups and in-depth interviews) will be used to identify various forms and contexts of violence victimization experienced by Latinx immigrants that are not currently captured by existing instruments. Cognitive testing approaches will elicit feedback on selected instruments and pilot adapted methods.

Lead Faculty: Mija-tesse Ververs

This scientific repository is compiled by the Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health and provides an overview of what peer-reviewed journal articles currently state on COVID-19, maternal and child health (including infants), and nutrition. As the pandemic is ongoing, more and more research results are published. With this service, this project provides the user with a snapshot of what is published with updates every week. The users' group comprises health professionals, researchers, policymakers, donors, etc. working all over the world on COVID-19. 

Project aims on building national leadership in humanitarian programming.

Lead Faculty: Leonard Rubenstein

Multiple studies confirm a global consensus that attacks against healthcare in armed conflict, including access constraints, violence, and insecurity, represent a major threat to health, particularly for vulnerable groups and women. Gathering evidence about attacks has, to date, been crucial in raising awareness of the issue. Yet the consequences of attacks against healthcare in armed conflict remain a majory knowledge gap. According to the WHO, ‘while the consequences of such attacks are as yet largely undocumented, they are presumed to be significant – negatively affecting short-term health care delivery as well as the longer-term health and well-being of affected populations, health systems, the health workforce, and ultimately our global public health goals.’ Better understanding of these consequences could help promote the resilience of health programs, enable more effective measures to mitigate the impact of attacks at multiple levels, inform accountability mechanisms, and advance advocacy efforts aimed to prevent attacks, in addition to contributions toward the health and well-being of health workers and affected populations.

The project’s core objectives are as follows:

1. To generate new evidence about the impact of attacks on healthcare on health systems, humanitarian and health actors and their staff, affected communities, and patients.

2. To develop, test, and document methodological approaches to assess impact that can be applied in challenging environments.

This is an ongoing consortium of four universities based the University of Manchester (UK) involving research projects in Afghanistan (University of Geneva lead), Central African Republic (JHU lead), Colombia (University of California Berkeley lead), and Nepal (University of Manchester lead), along with publications on research methods, systematic reviews of the literature, and other activities. There’s a web site for the consortium, https://riah.manchester.ac.uk

Lead Faculty: Sara Bennett

The research focuses on integration; the extent to which host country health facilities provide services to both refugees and national populations (potentially with financial support from external agencies), in a manner whereby both populations are able to receive equally appropriate care, of an adequate quality. Subsumed within this concept of integration are also the notions that (i) health workers from the refugee population are able to work and provide health care services, and (ii) that financial mechanisms established to support services are integrated with financing channels employed by the host nation. Therefore, we will assess integration from three different perspective: the service delivery model, the integration of refugee health workers and the financing mechanism.

Research question 1: What are the perceptions and experiences of stakeholders (international, regional and national) as well as host and refugee populations towards refugees’ integration in health systems and how does this differ across contexts?

Research question 2: What factors, at the structural, institutional and individual/community levels, have shaped the adoption and implementation (or lack thereof) of country policies that support the integration of refugees into health systems?

Research question 3: To what extent are refugees integrated (or not) into national health systems, and how has this affected availability, access and quality of health services for both refugees and national population?

Research question 4: What financial mechanisms and flows have been employed to support the integration of refugees into health systems and how has this affected financial sustainability of health services for both refugees and national populations?

Lead Faculty: Leonard Rubenstein

Through research and leadership of global coalition, develop mechanisms for protection of health care from violence in conflict; promote action by states to take key steps toward protection; and ensure accountability for perpetrators of violence against health care.

https://www.safeguardinghealth.org

Lead Faculty: Gilbert Burnham, Shannon Doocy

To assess compliance with treatment and control of disease over three years among vulnerable and low income populations in Ghana (with a companion study in the Philippines for which Shannon Doocy is the co-investigator).

Lead Faculty: Gilbert Burnham

This study will examine causes of mortality and access to health services among populations trapped in Mosul, Iraq, during the period of ISIS control.