Dr Laura Reichenbach

Dr Reichenbach brings over two decades of research, management, and leadership experience in global health designing, implementing, and publishing high-quality research to improve the delivery and uptake of proven health interventions across a range of public health and development issues, with particular experience in sexual and reproductive health, family planning and maternal and neonatal health. She has over 12 years of residential field experience in South and Southeast Asia designing, leading, managing, and implementing applied research to generate actionable evidence for improved health and development outcomes. Trained as a social scientist, her research expertise includes implementation science, qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods, project evaluation, and policy analysis. Her specific areas of academic and research experience include social and behavior change, family planning and unintended pregnancy, maternal and neonatal health, cervical cancer, intersections of reproductive health and poverty reduction, human resources for health, and gender. She brings teaching, academic advising, training, and mentoring experience from several roles at academic and research institutions, including as Adjunct Faculty at the James P Grant School of Public Health at BRAC University and in multiple roles at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies and the Harvard School of Public Health.

In her previous role at the Population Council as Senior Associate and Project Director of Breakthrough RESEARCH, USAID’s 54 million dollar global flagship social and behavior change (SBC) research and evaluation project, she led a consortium of five partners in the design, generation, and dissemination of evidence to inform SBC programming and policies around the world. This included oversight of more than 50 research and research utilization activities in Latin America and the Caribbean, South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. In her previous capacity as the Director of the Center for Reproductive Health at icddr,b in Dhaka, Bangladesh, she provided overall scientific and administrative leadership to 100+ scientists, scientific and administrative and field-based staff; coordinated consensus-driven processes to identify research priorities responsive to the priority health needs of Bangladesh; successfully generated funding from multiple donors; and built capacity of junior scientists and researchers.

Dr Reichenbach has played key technical and management roles on multi-disciplinary teams and has successfully developed collaborative research relationships with local stakeholders in research and program implementation in diverse settings. An accomplished fundraiser, Dr Reichenbach has successfully raised and facilitated research funding from a range of donors. Long-term residence in South Asia and current partnerships and collaborative engagement with local research partners and academic institutions across Sub-Saharan Africa bring a diverse and strong global network of stakeholders. She holds a Doctorate of Science from the Harvard School of Public Health, has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals and book chapters, and is the editor of two books related to reproductive health and human rights and gender and the health workforce. She is co-editor of a recently published special issue on provider behavior change.

Dr Reichenbach has served as an advisory and technical advisory member of several global public health committees and advisory groups including in her current role on the WHO STAGE Anemia Technical Working Group.