George Odwe

George Odwe is a Research Associate II at the Population Council-Kenya. He leads PC-Kenya’s sexual and reproductive health, rights, and choices (SRHRC) research thematic area and supports the generation of evidence to enhance SRHR for vulnerable populations, including those in humanitarian settings. Odwe currently provides technical support for the implementation of Humanitarian Violence Against Children Surveys (HVACS), unintended pregnancy, and abortion studies in Ethiopia and Uganda (under the FCDO-funded Baobab RPC), and the ARCHES and CARE studies in Kenya.

Recently, Odwe supported operations research projects evaluating interventions for sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) survivors in the East, Horn, and Great Lakes Region of Africa. He also led research to expand access to education for out-of-school adolescent mothers. He has served as a principal or co-investigator on several studies, including a longitudinal study on unintended pregnancy and unmet family planning needs (under STEP-UP’s RPC funded by DFID), integration of subcutaneous depot medroxyprogesterone acetate (DMPA-SC) (Sayana® Press) into the contraceptive method mix in Uganda, research on the feasibility and acceptability of levonorgestrel (LNG) 1.5mg for pericoital use in Kenya, and implementation research on scaling up PSBI guidelines in Kenya.

Before joining the Council, Odwe was a research fellow at the Population Studies and Research Institute (PSRI) at the University of Nairobi, where he supported the implementation of their Poverty and Fertility Project, a three-year study examining the impacts of female autonomy on fertility, child mortality, and poverty.

Odwe holds a Ph.D. in Population Studies/Demography from the University of Nairobi and is a recipient of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation’s doctoral scholarship award under the Population and Poverty (PopPov) Research Initiative.