Carla Makhlouf Obermeyer

Carla Makhlouf Obermeyer is a Scientist in the Department of HIV/AIDS at the World Health Organization, where she is responsible for Operational Research. She joined WHO in 2000, after a decade of research and teaching in the Department of Population and International Health, Harvard University.

She has written and conducted research on a number of topics at the intersection of health and culture, using a combination of statistical and qualitative methodologies. Among the projects she has worked on are: a comparative investigation of therapeutic decision making around menopause in the US, Spain, Moroccon and Lebanon, studies of the Safe Motherhood initiative and patterns of breastfeeding in North Africa, analyses of the health and sexual consequences of female genital cutting, and research on the links between religion, gender, human rights, and population policy in the Middle East.

She has been Chair of the Committee on Reproductive Health of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population, and a member of the National Science Foundation Senior Review Panel for Anthropology. She is the author of numerous articles and three books: Changing Veils: Women and Modernization in Yemen (1979); Family Gender and Population in the Middle East (1995); Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Reproductive Health (2001).

Since joining the World Health Organization, Dr. Makhlouf Obermeyer has carried out research on gender and the use of medications, the ethics of HIV research, and the social and behavioral dimensions of HIV prevention and treatment. With support from NIH, she is about to start a multi-site study on the factors that hinder or facilitate the uptake of testing for HIV in Africa.