Biography:

 

Tara has been carrying out research to support the health and wellbeing of women for almost 15 years. Most of her research has been to improve the quality of sexual and reproductive health care through operationalizing and embedding evidence-based practices—that is, implementation research for improved sexual and reproductive health. Underscoring this improvement in quality has been the advancement of patient- and person-centred care, especially for vulnerable women (women living with HIV, adolescent young women, women who are survivors of trafficking) in low-resource settings. Much of her women’s health research has been in Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in Sierra Leone, Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania. Participatory methods that centre the lived experiences, priorities, and actions of women directly have featured heavily in the research she has led. Tara has taught a wide range of courses centring women’s health for almost a decade, and has supported 20 postgraduate students (master’s and PhD-level) whose research has explicitly focused on women’s health, ranging from driving systemic change to improve the prevention and management of postpartum haemorrhage, to improving uptake of high quality antenatal care, to art-based and other participatory approaches to identify and action the sexual and reproductive health of women who are survivors of trafficking. She is particularly interested in health systems strengthening interventions for women’s health that tackle issues “horizontally”, yielding crosscutting benefits across the health system.