Nandini Oomman

Senior Program Associate and Director of the HIV/AIDS Monitor
NOomman@cgdev.org

Expertise

HIV/AIDS; population and reproductive health; women's health; social science methods and public health research; India; South and Southeast Asia; Sub-Saharan Africa

Initiative

Research Topics

Education

Ph.D. Johns Hopkins University, School of Hygiene and Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA; B.Sc. (Biochemistry) McGill University, Montreal. Canada.

Background

Nandini Oomman joined CGD in March 2006 as the director of the HIV/AIDS Monitor, which tracks the effectiveness of the three main aid responses to the epidemic: the Global Fund, the HIV/AIDS Africa MAP program of the World Bank, and the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). Nandini manages the initiative and oversees much of the research program that underpins it. She has more than 15 years of public health research, program and policy experience, with emphasis on population, reproductive health and HIV/AIDS.

Before receiving her doctorate from the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, Nandini managed an urban HIV/AIDS prevention program for commercial sex workers and college youth in Mumbai, India and led the technical development of an HIV/AIDS mass media campaign in the same city. In 1996, a post-doctoral fellowship took her to the Rockefeller Foundation where she managed technical assistance for a research grants program on improving reproductive health service delivery in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. From 2002-2004, Nandini worked as a specialist in population, reproductive health and HIV/AIDS issues at the World Bank.

Just before joining CGD, she consulted with private foundations in the US as an independent researcher. As part of this work, she examined issues of population and reproductive health assistance within the larger ODA landscape, for the Packard Foundation. She has published widely on issues concerning reproductive and women’s health including Achieving the Millennium Development Goal of Improving Maternal Health: Determinants, Interventions and Challenges and A Review of Population, Reproductive Health, and Adolescent Health & Development in Poverty Reduction Strategies, both for the World Bank.

Selected NON-CGD Publications:

Reports

1. Lule, E., GNV Ramana, N. Oomman, J. Epp, D. Huntington & J. Rosen. (2005). Achieving the Millennium Development Goal of Improving Maternal Health: Determinants, Interventions and Challenges. HNP Discussion Paper, Health, Nutrition and Population. The World Bank. Washington, D.C.

2. Sundaram, S, J. Epp, N. Oomman & J.E. Rosen. (2004). A Review of Population, Reproductive Health, and Adolescent Health & Development in Poverty Reduction Strategies, The Population and Reproductive Health Cluster Health, Nutrition and Population Central Unit, The World Bank, Washington, DC

Book Chapters

1.Oomman, N. & J. Gittelsohn. (2002) Qualitative Methods in Gynecological Morbidity Research, in Research Approaches to the Study of Reproductive tract Infections and Other Gynaecological Disorders (eds. Shireen J Jejeebhoy, Michael A Koenig and Christopher Elias). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK

2. Oomman, N. (2000) Gynecological Morbidity in India: A Decade of Research on Reproductive Tract Infections (RTIs) and other Gynaecological Morbidity in India: What we know and what we don’t know, In Readings in Women’s Reproductive Health in India, (eds. R. Ramasubban, & S. Jejeebhoy). Centre for Social and Technological Change, Rawat Publications, Mumbai, India.

Papers

Oomman N, & B. Ganatra. (2002) Sex Selection: The Systematic Elimination of Girls Reproductive Health Matters, 10 (19): 184-188