Dr. Sarah Meyer
2009
John Monash Scholar
PhD
Public health
Johns Hopkins
United States of America
Medicine and Health
Violence against women, violence against children, mental health
Sarah is a Rhodes Scholar from Victoria who has completed an MPhil at Oxford in Development Studies. With her John Monash Scholarship she undertook a PhD in International Public Health at the Johns Hopkins University, USA. At Johns Hopkins she was involved in a project with the International Rescue Committee, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, examining mental health issues of children in refugee camps in Thailand (from Burma) and Ethiopia. For her dissertation, she worked on a collaboration between researchers at Johns Hopkins and Social Action for Women, a Burmese community-based organization, which examined risks and prevalence of labour and sex trafficking from Burma to Thailand. She has worked as a consultant for several United Nations agencies, publishing a major review of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees' mental health programs for refugees and a review of evidence on the impact of conflict on children's psychosocial wellbeing for UNICEF. She was the first Research Director at the AfriChild Centre in Kampala, leading and implementing studies on violence against children and mental health in Uganda, and continues to support capacity-building efforts for researchers affiliated to the Centre. She has been a consultant for the World Health Organization's Department of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Research for several years, working on methodology and measurement related to the Sustainable Development Goals focused on violence against women, implementation research on health system response to violence against women in India, and systematic reviews on violence against older women and women with disabilities. She has published her research in several peer-reviewed journals, and has developed expertise in design and implementation of evidence reviews. She is currently living in Jerusalem with her husband, Ari, who is a refugee lawyer, and three sweet children - Ora (5.5), Dov (2.5) and Aviv (1).