Associate Professor, Center for Global Health Science and Security, Global Infectious Diseases Program Faculty
Sharon Abramowitz is a medical anthropologist who specializes in community engagement, mental health, gender violence, and epidemic preparedness and response. She has been a leading global advocate for building national community engagement capacity, strengthening integrated analytics (IOA) and social science, risk communications, and community engagement (RCCE) capacity, metrics, and utilization in public health emergencies. Dr. Abramowitz is the author of numerous publications on mental health in humanitarian and disease outbreak contexts, including her 2014 monograph Searching for Normal in the Wake of the Liberian War, an ethnographic exploration of the relationship between individual and collective trauma during Liberia's post-conflict reconstruction period. Today, Dr. Abramowitz partners with West African mental health policy makers to strengthen regional capacity for mental health service delivery, capacity building, research, and stigma reduction. SHe is currently focusing on the thematic and intervention intersections between mental health, global health security, and disease outbreaks; and she is particularly attentive to how those needs are met through community engagement and community-based healthcare work. Dr. Abramowitz also supports 70 social scientists in providing country-of-origin expert reports on mental health, gender-based violence, human rights, and social vulnerabilities as the Director of Communitology, and she has personally provided over 65 expert testimonies for immigration and asylum seekers with mental health and disability challenges in the US, UK, EU, and Canadian immigration systems.