A key principle of Ipas's research is our commitment to strong partnerships with major stakeholders at every stage, from project design through dissemination. Such partnerships have facilitated dissemination and utilization of the findings to strengthen programs, overcoming the long distance that often exists between research and action. To this end, we have developed active relationships with a range of local and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), universities and schools, professional societies, multilateral agencies and governmental institutions. As part of these collaborations, Ipas researchers have fostered the growth of in-country research expertise.

Ipas is a founding member and coordinator of the Consortium for Research on Unsafe Abortion in Africa. Comprised of three African-based and two international organizations, the Consortium supports a program of original research to improve understanding of the prevalence, causes and consequences of unsafe abortion in the region, provide evidence to reduce unwanted pregnancy and unsafe abortion, and increase women's access to comprehensive abortion care. The Consortium also focuses on communication of research findings to an array of audiences and supports capacity building for expanded abortion research in Africa.

Our research-and-evaluation program is supported by private foundations, bilateral donors and multilateral organizations. Ipas researchers have published in peer-reviewed journals, including:

• The Lancet,
• BJOG,
• International Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health,
• Studies in Family Planning,
• Social Science and Medicine,
• Health Policy and Planning,
• Journal of the International Federation of Gynecologists and Obstetricians,
• Contraception,
• Human Resources for Health, and the
• International Journal of Midwifery and Women's Health.

Valerie Acre, Data Analyst (US) -
MHS in Population, Family and Reproductive Health, The Johns Hopkins University
Ms. Acre joined Ipas in 2011 to provide technical support to the Research and Evaluation Unit, including statistical analysis, data management, and technical writing. She currently works on research, monitoring and evaluation for Ipas's programs in Asia. Prior to joining Ipas, Ms. Acre's master's research focused on family planning referral systems in a teaching hospital in Ghana. Her past work also includes research in biomedical engineering focusing on medical instrument design and modeling. Her professional interests include reproductive health-care access, medical technologies for low income settings, and reproductive rights.

Kathryn Andersen, Senior Research and Evaluation Associate (US) –
MS in Biostatistics, Ph.D. in Maternal and Child Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Dr. Andersen provides technical support to the Research and Evaluation Unit on research methodologies, sampling, data management and statistical analysis. She currently works on research, monitoring and evaluation for Ipas's programs in Asia. Her professional interests include violence against women; reproductive health-care access and associated costs; and converting research into policy and practice. Her research has been published in Violence against Women, Women and Health, Contraception, the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Studies in Family Planning, and the Journal of the Internal Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics. Dr. Andersen is an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Maternal and Child Health at the Gillings Global School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She also serves as the statistical methods editor for the Journal of Midwifery and Women's Health.

Paschal Awah, Senior Research Advisor, Africa (Cameroon) -
MA in Sociology, University of Yaounde I, Cameroon; M.Phil. and PhD in Medical Anthropology, University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, United Kingdom
Dr. Awah has extensive research, health services, training and policy experience in chronic disease prevention and management in his home country of Cameroon and in others in Africa. He also has been a researcher with the WHO HRP Collaborating Centre in Cameroon, working on sexual and reproductive health, including abortion, and helped adapt national reproductive health policy to reflect the 1994 Cairo Conference agreements. He has significant background in the ethical review of research, has worked to establish research ethics committees in several African countries, and in 2008, completed a biomedical ethics fellowship with the University of Miami, University of Washington, Seattle, and the Western Institutional Review Board, Olympia, in Washington State (US). He is a member of the WHO/UNAIDS Ethics, Law and Human Rights Working Group of the African AIDS Vaccine Program. Dr. Awah has co-authored articles in many peer-reviewed journals, including Health Education Research, International Journal of Epidemiology, BMC Health Services Research, Africa, and the African Journal of Health Sciences, as well as books and monographs on malaria, reproductive health and other topics.

Sushanta K. Banerjee, Senior Research and Evaluation Advisor (India) -
PhD and MPS in Population Studies, International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai, India; MA in Economics, University of Kalyani, Kalyani, India
Dr. Banerjee oversees the research and evaluation component for Ipas's country program in India. Before his association with Ipas in 2006, Dr. Banerjee worked as the Technical Director of Population Services International-India for more than three years. He has 14 years of experience in program monitoring and evaluation; study design; and guiding evidence-based behavior change communication strategies in reproductive health issues. Dr. Banerjee has led numerous cross-sectional & longitudinal program evaluations, large-scale demographic surveys in India, operations research and program monitoring, including the Demographic Health Survey (NFHS). He also has worked for a wide variety of international organizations, including Futures Group International, Taylor Nelson Sofres India and the International Institute for Population Sciences. His professional interests include program and policy evaluation, pathways of unsafe abortion, community intervention on medical abortion, postabortion family planning and demographic dynamics of abortion research. Dr. Banerjee has written many Ipas-published monographs, and has also authored/co-authored articles in numerous peer-reviewed journals, including Global Public Health, Asia-Pacific Population Journal/United Nations, Economic & Political Weekly, Aging & Society, Newborn-The Indian Journal of Pediatrics.

Janie Benson, Vice President, Research and Evaluation (US) -
MPH, The Johns Hopkins University; DrPH, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Dr. Benson joined Ipas in 1990 and provides oversight for Ipas's Research and Evaluation Unit and leadership in the measurement of organizational strategic objectives and impact. During her tenure, she has overseen a significant expansion of Ipas's research and evaluation work in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Dr. Benson has written many Ipas-published monographs and manuals, and has also authored/co-authored articles in numerous peer-reviewed journals, including The Lancet, Studies in Family Planning, International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Social Science and Medicine, and Health Policy and Planning. Her research interests include postabortion family planning, service-delivery quality and access, costs of abortion care, and program evaluation. Dr. Benson is an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Maternal and Child Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's School of Public Health and serves on the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of the Schools of Public Health and Nursing at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Kamal Biswas, Monitoring and Evaluation Associate (Bangladesh) –
MBBS (Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery), Dhaka University, Dhaka, Bangladesh; MBA in Health, Population & Nutrition in Developing Countries, Keele University, England
Dr. Kamal Biswas provides technical support to the Research and Evaluation unit on research methodologies, statistical analysis and data management. He currently works on monitoring and evaluation for Ipas's country program Bangladesh. Prior to joining Ipas in 2011, Dr. Biswas served as a Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist for a large, national urban primary health-care initiative where he designed and supervised survey implementation, and analyzed and prepared the findings for publication. Previously, he served as a Health Systems Analyst for WHO and the World Bank, and consulted on a range of public health projects for other international and local organizations in Bangladesh including ICDDR,B, EngenderHealth and the MOHFW. Dr. Biswas has co-authored articles in Midwifery and the American College of Nurse Midwifery.

Tamara Fetters, Senior Research and Evaluation Associate (US) -
MPH, University of California at Los Angeles
Ms. Fetters joined Ipas in 2000 after serving as a University of Michigan Population Fellow with CARE in Zambia. She was also a Fullbright Scholar in Indonesia. At Ipas, Ms. Fetters provides technical support to several field offices in Africa and in Cambodia in research design and monitoring and evaluation. Her current research includes a province-wide introduction to medical abortion in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa; large-scale introduction and evaluation of medical abortion in Zambia; the introduction of misoprostol for postabortion care services in three Nigerian hospitals, and the morbidity and mortality measurement due to unsafe abortion in Cambodia. Ms. Fetters has also acted as technical advisor for various meetings and study reviews for WHO, UNAIDS and the International Development Research Centre in Canada. Her professional interests include program and policy evaluation, measurement of abortion morbidity and mortality, participatory learning and action research, emergency obstetric care, and reproductive health for refugees. Ms. Fetters has co-authored articles in the BJOG, Studies in Family Planning, International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics, International Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, and Forced Migration Review.

Hailemichael Gebreselassie, Senior Research Advisor, Africa (Ethiopia) -
MD and MPH, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia; PhD in Epidemiology and Biostatistics, McGill University, Canada.
Since joining Ipas in 2000, Dr. Gebreselassie has served as an investigator on studies to assess postabortion care quality and access in public-sector health facilities in Ethiopia, Ghana and Mozambique; estimate the magnitude and severity of abortion complications treated in public health facilities in Kenya, Ethiopia and Malawi; and evaluate the performance of mid-level practitioners in provision of medical abortion in Mozambique. Using a methodology developed by the World Health Organization, Dr. Gebreselassie has led strategic assessments of abortion-related policies, programs and stakeholder perspectives in Zambia, Ghana, and Malawi. He currently serves as a co-principal investigator of an operations research project to introduce medical abortion services in Zambia. Dr. Gebreselassie has published articles in several peer-review journals, including the East Africa Medical Journal, the Ethiopia Journal of Health Development, Reproductive Health Matters, the BJOG, and International Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health. His research interests include measurement of abortion incidence and magnitude, medical abortion, and evaluation of abortion service quality and availability. Dr. Gebreselassie previously served as deputy director of the Ethiopian Health and Nutrition Research Institute.

Keris KrennHrubec, Data Analyst (US) - 
MPH in Epidemiology and International Health, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor 
Ms. KrennHrubec provides technical support to the Research and Evaluation Unit, and provides backstopping support for research, monitoring and evaluation for Ipas's programs in Ethiopia, South Africa and Zambia. This portfolio includes data analysis support for an introduction to medical abortion in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, and a large-scale introduction and evaluation of medical abortion in Zambia. She has also provided data analysis and technical writing support for two studies to estimate public health facility costs of postabortion care in Nigeria and Malawi. Prior to joining Ipas in 2010, Ms. KrennHrubec's work focused on the biological aspects of public health. She worked on several clinical studies on gene mutations in pancreatic cancer patients, and her master's research focused on the prevalence of different genetic types and variants of HPV among cervical cancer cases in Tunisia. Her professional interests include sexual and reproductive health, STIs, virology, human rights and reproductive rights.

Brooke A. Levandowski, Senior Research and Evaluation Associate (US) -
MPA in Public Administration, Syracuse University; PhD in Epidemiology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Dr. Levandowski joined Ipas in 2008 and provides technical and management oversight for a multi-year grant for abortion research in Africa. This responsibility includes coordinating the Consortium for Research on Unsafe Abortion, a group of international and African organizations working on abortion research to facilitate changes in policies and practices in the region. Dr. Levandowski is currently co-Investigator of a national study to estimate the magnitude and severity of abortion complications, and the incidence of abortion in Malawi. She also provides technical support for research, monitoring and evaluation in Ipas's programs in Ghana, Kenya, and the Africa Alliance. Prior to joining Ipas, her international research centered upon behavior of youth related to STI/HIV infections in South Africa and Malawi, while her research in the United States has focused on racial, ethnic and income disparities in maternal child health and reproductive health among incarcerated individuals and youth. Dr. Levandowski was also a Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon. Her peer-reviewed articles have been published in the International Journal of Epidemiology, AIDS, AIDS and Behavior, Journal of Adolescent Health, Journal of Public Health Management and Practice, and Medical Anthropology Quarterly.
 

Lauren Maxwell, Research and Evaluation Associate (US) -
MPH in Maternal and Child Health and certificate in field epidemiology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Gillings Global School of Public Health
Ms. Maxwell provides technical support to the Research and Evaluation Unit, acts as the backstop for Ipas's programs in Latin America, and conducts data analysis for African studies and monitoring and evaluation. Prior to joining Ipas in 2010, Ms. Maxwell worked for 6 years in qualitative and quantitative public health research with Latino populations in the United States and for several years in HIV, TB, and health access research with incarcerated and refugee populations in the US and the Middle East. Her master's paper focused on the intra-familial transmission of Hepatitis C virus in Egypt using the 2009 DHS datasets. Ms. Maxwell is fluent in Spanish and is an advanced speaker of the Yemeni and Egyptian dialects of Arabic. Her interests include field epidemiology, capacity building, and women's reproductive health in Latin America and the Middle East. Ms. Maxwell has co-authored articles in the Journal of Family Issues, the Journal of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association, and a chapter in the book, Immigration, Diversity, and Education.

Errol Nkonko, Research and Evaluation Coordinator (South Africa) –
BS in Statistics, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda; Honours, Mathematical Statistics, University of Pretoria, South Africa
Errol Nkonko joined Ipas South Africa in 2006, bringing a background in statistical analysis, survey design and implementation, and applied economics. He has worked as a junior analyst in marketing research and in various social science and health fields, including child health and HIV. Mr. Nkonko provides technical assistance in the design and implementation of reproductive health research projects and monitoring and evaluation of country core programs for Ipas South Africa. His professional interests include biostatistics, experimental design, analysis of variance and cartography.

Cheri Poss, Research and Evaluation Associate (US) –
MSPH in Health Policy and Management, University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill
Ms. Poss provides technical support for monitoring and evaluation of clinical training, service delivery and policy interventions in Asia and Africa, synthesizes monitoring data, and contributes to donor reporting. Prior to joining Ipas in 2011, Ms. Poss provided management support and oversight for two global research grants focused on HIV/AIDS, family planning, and TB at FHI. Previously, she has worked in the area of program evaluation, contributing to an evaluation of a women's microenterprise project in Kenya. She also has experience in domestic health policy, supporting constituent outreach for veterans' health affairs. Her master's research compared contraceptive continuation rates between women in community based distribution networks and those accessing clinic-based care in Uganda. Her professional interests include program evaluation, health policy, sexual and reproductive health, reproductive rights, and health systems strengthening.

Sharad Kumar Sharma, Monitoring and Evaluation Associate (Nepal) –
M.Sc. in Statistics, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal; M.A. in Population and Reproductive Health Research, Ph.D. in Demography, Institute for Population and Social Research, Mahidol University, Thailand
Dr. Sharad Sharma provides technical support to the Research and Evaluation Unit on research methodologies, statistical analysis, data management and report writing. He currently works on monitoring and evaluation for Ipas's country program in Nepal. Dr. Sharma has over 15 years of experience in monitoring and evaluation of population, health and nutrition program in Nepal. Prior to joining Ipas in 2011, Dr. Sharma served as a Demographer for the Family Health Division, Department of Health Services, Ministry of Health and Population in Nepal. He also served as a Statistical Officer for the Mid-Western Regional Health Directorate in Nepal. Dr. Sharma has presented papers in national and international conferences and co-authored many evaluation studies. He has published articles in the Journal of Health Psychology, Journal of Population and Social Studies and Journal of Biosocial Science.

Amy Vincus, Senior Research and Evaluation Associate (US) –
MPH in Health Behavior and Health Education, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Ms. Vincus joined Ipas in 2011 where she provides technical expertise to the global monitoring & evaluation M&E) efforts. She is currently supporting the roll-out of Ipas' upgraded M&E data collection, analysis, and reporting system. Ms. Vincus has more than 15 year experience in public health research and evaluation, focusing on process and outcome evaluations of US programs in school-based substance use prevention, sexual violence, school safety, and adolescent health, and, recently, evaluation of water and sanitation interventions in Swaziland. She has also worked as an educator and evaluator of community-based programs to increase breast cancer screening among African American women in rural and urban North Carolina. Amy was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Morocco in the early 1990s. Prior to joining Ipas, Amy worked for the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (PIRE) and for RTI International. She continues her relationship with the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education in the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she has supervised graduate student practica and has been a guest lecturer in numerous classes. Amy has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals, including Prevention Science, the American Journal of Public Health, the Journal of Adolescent Health, and the Journal of Drug Education; she has presented evaluation results at multiple professional conferences.

Kristen M. Shellenberg, Senior Research and Evaluation Associate (US) –
MPH in Community Health Sciences, University of California at Los Angeles; PhD in Population, Family and Reproductive Health, Johns Hopkins University
Dr. Shellenberg joined Ipas in 2011 and provides technical assistance for research, monitoring and evaluation in Ipas's programs in Nigeria. She also supports global evaluation and research efforts on abortion stigma and community access to abortion. Prior to joining Ipas, Dr. Shellenberg spent three years as a doctoral fellow at the Guttmacher Institute where she conducted quantitative and qualitative research on the stigma of abortion in the United States. She has a strong background with community-based programs and research, especially on adolescent reproductive health in the United States and Latin America, working with such organizations as the Population Council in Guatemala and Planned Parenthood. She was also a Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador, where she worked in rural public health. Dr. Shellenberg's professional interests include abortion, contraception, reproductive rights, and translating research into policy and practice.

Gertrude Voetagbe, Research and Evaluation Associate (Ghana) -
MSC in Medical Statistics, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University of London, UK
Ms. Voetagbe joined Ipas Ghana in January 2007. She provides technical and managerial support for monitoring and evaluation of program implementation and performance. Her work current includes regular monitoring of health facilities supported by Ipas, post-training follow-up of trained clinical providers, and ensuring accurate and proper documentation of service provision. Ms. Voetagbe is the lead author of a 2010 article in Human Resources for Health on midwifery tutors' capacity and willingness to offer abortion care in pre-service training.  Previously, Ms. Voetagbe worked in the Health Research Unit of the Ghana Health Service as statistician and data manager.