Dr Anna Chavez

MA Hons MSc Phd

I am a medical anthropologist and public health specialist with experience in applied health research and public health intervention development in LMICs and with ethnic minorities in the UK. I have particular research interests in global mental health, sickle cell disease and trait, energy poverty, infant thermal care and health benefits of nature.

I currently work on two global mental health projects at LSHTM. The first, RESPONSE, is a realist evaluation of health systems responsiveness in Vietnam and Ghana which will be looking at mental health during pregnancy. The second is SUCCEED, an international research consortium which is using an approach of co-production to investigate what works for supporting people with psychosis in their communities in Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Malawi and Zimbabwe. My work with SUCCEED also involves supporting the Mental Health Innovation Network, working with the MHIN Africa and Latin America hubs.

My Latin American research experience includes conducting an auto ethnography of infant thermal care beliefs in Guatemala City which contributed to my Ph.D in on infant thermal care beliefs and practices in Guatemala and Bradford, UK. I lived, worked and raised two young sons in Guatemala City over a 5 year period which gave me the ideal opportunity for auto-ethnography. For my undergraduate degree in social anthropology I conducted 8 months of ethnography with remote Ngäbe communities in Panama looking at social change and relationships between the communities and visiting NGOs. I am currently on the REEC for Save the Children (UK), reviewing ethics applications for their global research and evaluation programmes and supporting the development of their research skills and culture. I am fluent in Spanish.

In addition to the above I have been a PI or Co-I on several applied health research projects. These projects include the impact of fuel poverty on children and adults with sickle cell disease (Northern England and Midlands, UK); ethical challenges of incidental findings of sickle cell trait status through diabetes testing (UK); barriers to using green spaces (Bradford, UK); citizen science and co-design of green space interventions (Bradford); childhood asthma and fuel poverty (South Yorkshire, UK); domestic mould reduction intervention project (Rotherham, UK); evaluation of the DH funded Foundations Independent Living Trust Ltd’s Warm Homes Service (England); evaluation of a tool for assessing the parent-infant relationship (Bradford); personalised midwifery (Bradford).