Dr Jennifer Palmer
Associate Professor
London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
15-17 Tavistock Pl
London
WC1H 9SH
United Kingdom
I am an anthropologist with a background in infectious disease control and additional training in microbiology, epidemiology, health systems and policy analysis. Previously I was a founder and director of LSHTM’s Health in Humanitarian Crises Centre. Having entered academia through humanitarian practice, most of my work seeks to use social science and interdisciplinary evidence to highlight the social and political dimensions of public health programming in settings affected by humanitarian crises.
My research has taken place mainly in East, Central and West Africa, with a long-term focus on South Sudan and Uganda. It has spanned work on sexual and reproductive health, disability, eye care, epidemics, mortality estimation in crises, gender violence, forced migration, refugee health worker employment, and censorship in crisis-related research. An additional interest is in the control of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) including cutaneous leishmaniasis, Buruli ulcer, leprosy and human African trypanosomiasis (HAT or sleeping sickness). I served for several years on the steering committee for the global clinical trials during an exciting period of adjustment and innovation for the HAT field including the roll-out of novel rapid diagnostic tests, oral treatments and tsetse fly targets, made possible through renewed investments for HAT elimination.
I received a PhD and MSc in Control of Infectious Diseases from LSHTM as well as a BSc, Hon in Microbiology & Immunology from McGill University in Canada.
Affiliations
Centres
Teaching
I am Programme Co-Director for the LSHTM’s inter-disciplinary and cross-faculty MSc Control of Infectious Diseases. I also teach on several other modules at the School including ‘Conflict & Health’, ‘Management & Evaluation of Humanitarian Health Programmes (Distance learning)’, ‘Introduction to Disease Agents & their Control’ and ‘Neglected Tropical Diseases’.
Research
I have a long-term interest in the social dynamics and politics of infectious disease surveillance and care, particularly the tacit skills and locally-embedded diagnostic knowledge of frontline healthcare workers and lay experts, as well as evolving approaches to how scientists see and know infectious diseases at a population level through diagnostic and information technologies.
I use ethnographic and other social science methods to understand the complexities of public health programming which affect crisis-affected communities and connect them to global aid structures and trends. As the COVID-19 pandemic spread to humanitarian contexts, the social dynamics and politics of COVID-19 surveillance amongst forcibly displaced populations was a key area that I researched and provided guidance on through the Social Science in Humanitarian Action Platform.
I also use these methods to understand the histories and dynamics of public health systems and communities of practice, which helps identify contextually appropriate opportunities for system-wide support and change.
I currently lead or work on a range of projects:
- The which provides practical resources and advice to encourage emergency responses which are effective, adaptive, contextually informed, and sensitive to vulnerabilities and power relations.
- Mortality Estimation Systems Innovation Partnership which seeks to explore governance and collaboration challenges and drive collective action on systematic mortality estimation work in humanitarian settings
- The Skin Health African Research Programme which is a multi-disciplinary collaboration exploring and piloting health system and community-based solutions to improve experiences of stigmatising skin NTDs
I have supervised PhD and DrPH students at LSHTM who have studied a range of issues (including humanitarian coordination, epidemic decision-making, the role of health workers in humanitarian service delivery, vaccine uptake, risk perceptions, sleeping sickness technology engagements, disability and gender-based violence) mainly in crisis-affected contexts including South Sudan, Uganda, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, DR Congo, Iraq, Ukraine, Bangladesh and Lebanon.
Selected Publications
