Leanne Dougherty

Leanne Dougherty is a senior implementation science advisor for the Population Council. She manages a portfolio of social and behavior change (SBC) research, monitoring, and evaluation activities under the US Agency for International Development (USAID)–funded Breakthrough RESEARCH project in francophone West Africa.

In this capacity, Dougherty leads an ambitious research agenda to answer key programmatic questions related to SBC in the francophone West Africa region. The research portfolio includes over 10 research studies that focus on a range of health topics, including family planning, maternal and child health, nutrition and water, sanitation, and hygiene. The francophone West Africa research portfolio is valued at $3 million and addresses a range of SBC approaches including provider behavior change, social accountability, a youth-led social media campaign, integrated SBC, and gender-sensitive SBC programming. Dougherty manages a large team of mid-level and senior staff members, as well as consultants and regional research partners. She is also a member of the USAID Family Planning High Impact Practice group focused on SBC, where she provides technical guidance on evaluating studies related to interpersonal communication. She also facilitates trainings to build capacity of international nongovernmental organizations on SBC measurement.

Prior to joining the Council, Dougherty worked as a senior technical advisor with the Center for Health Information and Monitoring and Evaluation (CHIME) at John Snow, Inc. (JSI). In this capacity, she served as a resource on research, monitoring and evaluation approaches, cost and expenditure analyses, and strategy and proposal development for JSI projects. She was responsible for leading a portfolio of learning activities for the USAID Maternal and Child Survival Program (MCSP) and the Strengthening Partnerships Results for Innovation in Nutrition Globally (SPRING) project. She also was the research, monitoring, and evaluation principal investigator for the Community Benefits Health evaluation under the Concern Worldwide–led Innovations project. She served for five years as an analyst for the Analysis, Information, Management and Knowledge Management Services projects where she managed the publication of the Global Health Child Survival Report to Congress in 2009 and 2010.

She has published a number of peer-reviewed articles and presented at international conferences focused on informing and evaluating innovative SBC approaches related to maternal and child health and immunization programs.

Dougherty has a Master’s in public health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.