Who We Are

Charlotte Warren is a senior associate at the Population Council’s Washington, DC office. She serves as Director of the Ending Eclampsia project. A nurse by training, she has had extensive experience in sub-Saharan Africa using implementation research to support ministries of health develop policies, implement best practices, and scale up programs for maternal and neonatal health, reproductive health, family planning, and primary health care.

Sharif M.I. Hossain is the project deputy for Ending Eclampsia. As an associate in the Population Council’s Bangladesh office, he conceptualizes, implements, supervises, and evaluates research projects on sexual and reproductive health. His expertise includes reproductive and sexual health, HIV and AIDS, family planning, gender-based violence, and capacity building on operations research.

Salisu Mohammed Ishaku manages the Population Council’s reproductive health projects in Nigeria as the senior program officer. He provides leadership in the design, implementation, and evaluation of the Council’s programs and works with the Nigerian government and Federal Ministry of Health to incorporate Council research into policy decisions. He worked to increase access to emergency contraception and the levonorgestrel intrauterine system, and contributed to the development of national policies that increased the number of health professionals able to treat pre-eclampsia and eclampsia.

Ali M. Mir is an associate in the Population Council’s Pakistan office. As director of programs, he works to expand access to family planning services through research, training, and advocacy. He directed the Council’s FALAH project, a multifaceted intervention that increased contraceptive use by 9 percent and emphasized the benefits of family planning for women and children’s health. After examining Islamic viewpoints on family planning, he also developed a training module on Islam and family planning for health care providers and medical college faculty.

Amy Dempsey is Knowledge Translation Manager for the Ending Eclampsia project, in the Population Council’s Washington, DC office. As part of the Maternal Newborn Health team in the Reproductive Health Program, she oversees the development of knowledge-sharing materials, tools, and strategies for policy change and scale-up. Previously, she provided technical assistance on maternal and child nutrition projects and researched cultural and economic barriers that inhibit women and girls from accessing quality reproductive health services in Ethiopia and Zambia.

Karen Kirk joined the Population Council’s Reproductive Health program as Communications Assistant for Maternal and Newborn Health projects after receiving an MPH in Global Health from Boston University with a concentration in Sex, Sexuality, Gender, and Health, and a Graduate Certificate in African Studies. At BU, she worked in a team of graduate student consultants to assess the effect of the Community Health Strategy in Oloitokitok sub-county in Kenya. In 2009, during undergraduate study, she conducted an independent research project on the collaborative work between an international NGO and the Senegal’s Ministry of Health on the abandonment of female genital mutilation/cutting.