Sharon Abramowitz

Sharon Abramowitz is a medical anthropologist who specializes in Ebola, infectious disease, epidemic preparedness and response, community engagement, and data sharing. Presently, she is co-leading UNICEF’s efforts to establish minimum standards for community engagement, and is the PI on a Wellcome Trust research study examining data sharing during the West Africa Ebola epidemic (2014-2015) and the 2016 Yellow Fever outbreak (DRC, Uganda, Angola, China). She is a leading advocate for the integration of social sciences into epidemic response, and works closely with the World Health Organization, UNICEF, Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust, USAID, and other partners to identify opportunities for standardizing and accelerating interactions between social science, clinical medicine, and epidemiology in epidemics. She is also an expert on humanitarian intervention, mental health, gender violence, health sector transitions, and post-conflict reconstruction in West Africa. She is the author of Searching for Normal in the Wake of the Liberian War,  co-editor of the book Medical Humanitarianism: Ethnographies of Practice, and numerous publications on the West African Ebola outbreak published in the Lancet, Global Public Health, PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, and the Journal of Infectious Disease. She is based in based in Boston, Massachusetts.