Carla Makhlouf Obermeyer
Biographic Data
| ID | 154604 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Carla Makhlouf Obermeyer |
| GIVEN NAMES | Carla Makhlouf |
| FAMILY NAME | Obermeyer |
| SIGNATURE | OBERMEYER C M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Harvard University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 52 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 248 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 52 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1991 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2019 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Prevalence of intimate partner violence against women in the Arab world
Measuring performance on the Healthcare Access and Quality Index for 195 countries and territories and selected subnational locations
BACKGROUND: A key component of achieving universal health coverage is ensuring that all populations have access to quality health care. Examining where gains have occurred or progress has faltered across and within countries is crucial to guiding decisions and strategies for future improvement. We used the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2016 (GBD 2016) to assess personal health-care access and quality with the Healthc…
Measuring progress from 1990 to 2017 and projecting attainment to 2030 of the health-related Sustainable Development Goals for 195 countries and territories
BACKGROUND: Efforts to establish the 2015 baseline and monitor early implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) highlight both great potential for and threats to improving health by 2030. To fully deliver on the SDG aim of "leaving no one behind", it is increasingly important to examine the health-related SDGs beyond national-level estimates. As part of the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2017 (GBD 2…
Measuring progress and projecting attainment on the basis of past trends of the health-related Sustainable Development Goals in 188 countries
BACKGROUND: The UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are grounded in the global ambition of "leaving no one behind". Understanding today's gains and gaps for the health-related SDGs is essential for decision makers as they aim to improve the health of populations. As part of the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2016 (GBD 2016), we measured 37 of the 50 health-related SDG indicators over the period 1990-2016 for 188…
Healthcare Access and Quality Index based on mortality from causes amenable to personal health care in 195 countries and territories, 1990–2015
BACKGROUND: National levels of personal health-care access and quality can be approximated by measuring mortality rates from causes that should not be fatal in the presence of effective medical care (ie, amenable mortality). Previous analyses of mortality amenable to health care only focused on high-income countries and faced several methodological challenges. In the present analysis, we use the highly standardised cause of death and risk factor …
Global, regional, and national comparative risk assessment of 84 behavioural, environmental and occupational, and metabolic risks or clusters of risks, 1990–2016
BACKGROUND: The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2016 (GBD 2016) provides a comprehensive assessment of risk factor exposure and attributable burden of disease. By providing estimates over a long time series, this study can monitor risk exposure trends critical to health surveillance and inform policy debates on the importance of addressing risks in context. METHODS: We used the comparative risk assessment framework dev…
Global, regional, and national under-5 mortality, adult mortality, age-specific mortality, and life expectancy, 1970–2016
BACKGROUND: Detailed assessments of mortality patterns, particularly age-specific mortality, represent a crucial input that enables health systems to target interventions to specific populations. Understanding how all-cause mortality has changed with respect to development status can identify exemplars for best practice. To accomplish this, the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2016 (GBD 2016) estimated age-specific and …
Global, Regional, and National Burden of Cardiovascular Diseases for 10 Causes, 1990 to 2015
BACKGROUND: The burden of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) remains unclear in many regions of the world. OBJECTIVES: The GBD (Global Burden of Disease) 2015 study integrated data on disease incidence, prevalence, and mortality to produce consistent, up-to-date estimates for cardiovascular burden. METHODS: CVD mortality was estimated from vital registration and verbal autopsy data. CVD prevalence was estimated using modeling software and data from h…
Global, regional, and national disability-adjusted life-years (Dalys) for 333 diseases and injuries and healthy life expectancy (Hale) for 195 countries and territories, 1990–2016
BACKGROUND: Measurement of changes in health across locations is useful to compare and contrast changing epidemiological patterns against health system performance and identify specific needs for resource allocation in research, policy development, and programme decision making. Using the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2016, we drew from two widely used summary measures to monitor such changes in population health: di…
Global burden of diseases, injuries, and risk factors for young people's health during 1990–2013
Global, regional, and national disability-adjusted life-years (Dalys) for 315 diseases and injuries and healthy life expectancy (Hale), 1990–2015
BACKGROUND: Healthy life expectancy (HALE) and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) provide summary measures of health across geographies and time that can inform assessments of epidemiological patterns and health system performance, help to prioritise investments in research and development, and monitor progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We aimed to provide updated HALE and DALYs for geographies worldwide and evaluate ho…
Global, regional, and national levels of maternal mortality, 1990–2015
BACKGROUND: In transitioning from the Millennium Development Goal to the Sustainable Development Goal era, it is imperative to comprehensively assess progress toward reducing maternal mortality to identify areas of success, remaining challenges, and frame policy discussions. We aimed to quantify maternal mortality throughout the world by underlying cause and age from 1990 to 2015. METHODS: We estimated maternal mortality at the global, regional, …
Measuring the health-related Sustainable Development Goals in 188 countries
BACKGROUND: In September, 2015, the UN General Assembly established the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs specify 17 universal goals, 169 targets, and 230 indicators leading up to 2030. We provide an analysis of 33 health-related SDG indicators based on the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2015 (GBD 2015). METHODS: We applied statistical methods to systematically compiled data to estimate the performance of…
Global, regional, and national comparative risk assessment of 79 behavioural, environmental and occupational, and metabolic risks or clusters of risks, 1990–2015
BACKGROUND: The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2015 provides an up-to-date synthesis of the evidence for risk factor exposure and the attributable burden of disease. By providing national and subnational assessments spanning the past 25 years, this study can inform debates on the importance of addressing risks in context. METHODS: We used the comparative risk assessment framework developed for previous iterations of t…
Understanding client satisfaction with HIV testing and counseling services
This paper uses mixed methods to provide comparative evidence across four African countries and identify those aspects of the testing experience that are the most important components of clients' satisfaction with services. We analyze data from three sources: a survey of clients at health facilities that included closed-ended questions about specific services and interactions around testing; responses to open-ended questions about testing experie…
Rewards and challenges of providing HIV testing and counselling services
The rapid scale-up of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) testing, counselling and treatment throughout sub-Saharan Africa has raised questions about how to protect patients' rights to consent, confidentiality, counselling and care in resource-constrained settings. The Multi-country African Testing and Counselling for HIV (MATCH) study investigated client and provider experiences with different modes of testing in sub-Saharan Africa. One component…
Ethical considerations of providers and clients on HIV testing campaigns in Burkina Faso
BACKGROUND: Campaigns have been conducted in a number of low HIV prevalence African settings, as a strategy to expand HIV testing, and it is important to assess the extent to which individual rights and quality of care are protected during campaigns. In this article we investigate provider and client perceptions of ethical issues, including whether they think that accessibility of counseling and testing sites during campaigns may hinder confident…
HIV testing and care in Burkina Faso, Kenya, Malawi and Uganda
BACKGROUND: The ethical discourse about HIV testing has undergone a profound transformation in recent years. The greater availability of antiretroviral therapy (ART) has led to a global scaling up of HIV testing and counseling as a gateway to prevention, treatment and care. In response, critics raised important ethical questions, including: How do different testing policies and practices undermine or strengthen informed consent and medical confid…
Cross cultural analysis of factors associated with age at natural menopause among latin‐american immigrants to madrid and their spanish neighbors
OBJECTIVES: In this study, age at menopause was examined in relation to demographic and life style factors among Latin-American immigrants to Madrid and their Spanish counterparts. METHODS: Respondents were drawn from the Decisions at Menopause Study (2002-2003) and from a recent sample of Latin-American immigrants to Madrid (2010-2011). The final sample included 484 women after excluding women with induced menopause and use of HT. Probit analyse…
The social and gender context of HIV disclosure in sub-Saharan Africa
This paper reviews the legal and policy context of HIV disclosure in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as what is known about rates, consequences and social context of disclosure, with special attention to gender issues and the role of health services. Persistent rates of nondisclosure by those diagnosed with HIV raise difficult ethical, public health and human rights questions about how to protect the medical confidentiality, health and well-being of …
Do support groups members disclose less to their partners? The dynamics of HIV disclosure in four African countries
Understanding of reasons for disclosure and recognition of the role of support groups in the process can help improve current prevention efforts, that increasingly focus on treatment as prevention as a way to halt new infections. Support groups can help spread secondary prevention messages, by explaining to their members that antiretroviral treatment has benefits for HIV positive individuals and their partners. Home-based testing can further faci…
Experiences of Stigma, Discrimination, Care and Support Among People Living with HIV
Women's views on consent, counseling and confidentiality in PMTCT
To achieve better PMTCT outcomes, the strategy of testing women in antenatal care (perceived as an exclusively female domain) when they are already pregnant needs to be rethought. When scaling up HIV testing programs, it is particularly important that issues of partner disclosure are taken seriously
Facilitating HIV Disclosure Across Diverse Settings
HIV status disclosure is central to debates about HIV because of its potential for HIV prevention and its links to privacy and confidentiality as human-rights issues. Our review of the HIV-disclosure literature found that few people keep their status completely secret; disclosure tends to be iterative and to be higher in high-income countries; gender shapes disclosure motivations and reactions; involuntary disclosure and low levels of partner dis…
Dynamics of Care, Situations of Choice
In the 1990s, African AIDS programs followed a voluntary counseling and testing (VCT) approach to HIV testing. In the wake of large scale AIDS treatment programs, policymakers opted for routine provider-initiated testing (PITC) with less emphasis on counseling, which led to concerns about the ethical conduct of HIV testing. Inspired by Annemarie Mol, we ask if PITC can be framed as good care, rather than as medical domination that threatens to vi…
Female Genital Surgeries
This article reviews the literature on female genital surgeries and examines the extent to which available research supports commonly accepted "facts" about the prevalence and harmful effects of these practices, in particular their possible health complications, and their effect on sexuality. While information regarding the prevalence of female genital surgeries is becoming increasingly available, the powerful discourse that depicts these practic…
Islam, Women, and Politics
This article examines three propositions that underlie many interpretations of the demography of Arab countries: that Arab countries do poorly in terms of demographic indicators that this is due to Islam and that the impact of Islam operates through the way in which it defines a low status for women. After reviewing the available data on fertility and health the article critically examines the claim that the high natality of Arab countries derive…
Pluralism and Pragmatism
This article examines knowledge and practice surrounding birth in Morocco, using women's narratives of their recent birth experiences, observations of medical encounters, and statements about prescribed behaviors during pregnancy and birth, as well as the vocabulary used to refer to physiological processes, disease conditions, and social relationships. The analysis shows that the three major themes that define the traditional Moroccan ethnophysio…
Culture, Maternal Health Care, and Women's Status
This report assesses the role of demographic, socioeconomic, and cultural factors in explaining differentials in maternal health-care use in North Africa. Analyses of the Demographic and Health Surveys for Morocco and Tunisia show substantial differences in the use of prenatal care and in the proportion of home compared with hospital births, both within and between the two countries. The findings raise the question of whether lower use rates are …
Maternal Health Care Utilization in Jordan
This article analyzes the patterns and determinants of maternal health care utilization in Jordan, using data from the Jordan Fertility and Family Health Survey of 1983. The study focuses on the 2,949 women who had a child in the five years preceding the survey. Through multivariate analyses of differentials in the utilization of prenatal care and health care at delivery, the study assesses the effect of sociodemographic factors, including reside…
The Health Consequences of Female Circumcision
This two-part article addresses questions that have arisen in current debates on the health consequences of female circumcision. The first part responds to a critique of a 1999 article and focuses on three major points: the role of research and advocacy in discussions of harmful effects, the sort of evidence that is appropriate for measuring health effects, and the way in which different disciplines-demography, epidemiology, and anthropology-are …
Reproductive Choice in Islam
This report examines the extent to which reproductive choice is compatible with Islamic principles. It presents the argument that the impact of Islam on reproductive choice is largely a function of the political context in which gender issues are defined. Indicators of reproductive health in countries of the Middle East are reviewed and the way these relate to constraints on reproductive choice is assessed. The examples of Tunisia and Iran are us…
Son Preference and Differential Treatment in Morocco and Tunisia
This report investigates the links between son preference and differential treatment of children by analyzing data from the Demographic and Health Surveys of Morocco and Tunisia, two countries that are thought to vary considerably regarding indicators of gender. The analyses find no significant differences in either country in the duration and intensity of breastfeeding and small differences in favor of boys in Tunisia regarding immunization and …
Qualitative Methods
This section contains five commentaries that examine the potentials and limitations of qualitative methods for improving our understanding of population processes. Written from the perspective of different disciplinary positions namely anthropology sociology history and economics in addition to demography they illustrate different paths toward achieving this goal and show that while anthropology has been the interlocutor of choice for demographer…
Back to nature? Historical and cross-cultural perspectives on barriers to optimal breastfeeding
This article examines the discrepancy between the recommendations of international authorities concerning breastfeeding and the practices of a significant proportion of women all over the world who discontinue breastfeeding because of the reported insufficiency of their milk. Our review of the evidence on the insufficient milk syndrome suggests that the phenomenon is inextricably linked to the construction of family, gender and motherhood at diff…
Gender and HIV testing in Burkina Faso
Risk, uncertainty, and agency
This article critically examines the notion that Moroccan women's infrequent use of health facilities during pregnancy and birth results from their lack of awareness of the risks of childbirth. It argues that while ethnographic data appear at first to lend support to this hypothesis, a closer examination of the customs surrounding birth shows that ideas about risk are found in local constructions of childbirth. The choices women make regarding bi…
Urbanisation, household composition and the reproductive health of women in a South African city
Dynamics of Care, Situations of Choice
In the 1990s, African AIDS programs followed a voluntary counseling and testing (VCT) approach to HIV testing. In the wake of large scale AIDS treatment programs, policymakers opted for routine provider-initiated testing (PITC) with less emphasis on counseling, which led to concerns about the ethical conduct of HIV testing. Inspired by Annemarie Mol, we ask if PITC can be framed as good care, rather than as medical domination that threatens to vi…
On Cutting Women's Genitals
This review of the literature examined the available evidence regarding the effects of what we call ‘female genital surgeries’ on women's health and sexuality. (t shows that the evidence on the consequences of female genital surgeries for health and sexuality is insufficient to support the powerful rhetoric that presents these practices as a grave danger to women's health. However, the scarcity of evidence is most likely due to the lack of concer…
Maternal Health Care Utilization in Jordan
This article analyzes the patterns and determinants of maternal health care utilization in Jordan, using data from the Jordan Fertility and Family Health Survey of 1983. The study focuses on the 2,949 women who had a child in the five years preceding the survey. Through multivariate analyses of differentials in the utilization of prenatal care and health care at delivery, the study assesses the effect of sociodemographic factors, including reside…
Islam, Women, and Politics
This article examines three propositions that underlie many interpretations of the demography of Arab countries: that Arab countries do poorly in terms of demographic indicators that this is due to Islam and that the impact of Islam operates through the way in which it defines a low status for women. After reviewing the available data on fertility and health the article critically examines the claim that the high natality of Arab countries derive…
Paediatric care and immunisation among Jordanian children
This paper investigates the behavioural aspects of health care use for Jordanian children from birth to 3 years using data from a national survey. Statistical analysis indicate differences in the determinants of the use of paediatric care and immunisation: whereas immunisation coverage was already good in 1983 (and has improved subsequently), paediatric care is used for fewer than half of the children under 1 year of age. Socioeconomic and demogr…
Culture, Maternal Health Care, and Women's Status
This report assesses the role of demographic, socioeconomic, and cultural factors in explaining differentials in maternal health-care use in North Africa. Analyses of the Demographic and Health Surveys for Morocco and Tunisia show substantial differences in the use of prenatal care and in the proportion of home compared with hospital births, both within and between the two countries. The findings raise the question of whether lower use rates are …
Reproductive Choice in Islam
This report examines the extent to which reproductive choice is compatible with Islamic principles. It presents the argument that the impact of Islam on reproductive choice is largely a function of the political context in which gender issues are defined. Indicators of reproductive health in countries of the Middle East are reviewed and the way these relate to constraints on reproductive choice is assessed. The examples of Tunisia and Iran are us…
Fertility norms and son preference in Morocco and Tunisia
This paper investigates the normative and behavioural dimensions of son preference in Morocco and Tunisia, using data from the Demographic and Health Surveys of the two countries. It considers three measures of son preference: (1) mothers' ideal number of children, and any preference for having more sons than daughters; (2) the desire for additional children, given their existing family; (3) reported use of contraception in relation to the existi…
Urbanisation, household composition and the reproductive health of women in a South African city
Back to nature? Historical and cross-cultural perspectives on barriers to optimal breastfeeding
This article examines the discrepancy between the recommendations of international authorities concerning breastfeeding and the practices of a significant proportion of women all over the world who discontinue breastfeeding because of the reported insufficiency of their milk. Our review of the evidence on the insufficient milk syndrome suggests that the phenomenon is inextricably linked to the construction of family, gender and motherhood at diff…
Son Preference and Differential Treatment in Morocco and Tunisia
This report investigates the links between son preference and differential treatment of children by analyzing data from the Demographic and Health Surveys of Morocco and Tunisia, two countries that are thought to vary considerably regarding indicators of gender. The analyses find no significant differences in either country in the duration and intensity of breastfeeding and small differences in favor of boys in Tunisia regarding immunization and …
Family, Gender and Population in the Middle East
Family, Gender, and Population in the Middle East
The diversity of governmental policies on population growth in countries of the Middle East and North Africa are considered in light of the international debates surrounding the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development, held in Cairo
Qualitative Methods
This section contains five commentaries that examine the potentials and limitations of qualitative methods for improving our understanding of population processes. Written from the perspective of different disciplinary positions namely anthropology sociology history and economics in addition to demography they illustrate different paths toward achieving this goal and show that while anthropology has been the interlocutor of choice for demographer…
Christians and Jews Under Islam
The installation of Islam in the Arab East the dechristianization of North Africa the crusades - a confrontation of two christianities the Christian recovery in the Ottoman Arab East from multinational empire to secular republic - the lost Christianity of Turkey Islam under Christian domination - the French empire in North Africa Israel and the Palestinian population explosion Arab Christianity in the 20th century - decline or eclipse
On Cutting Women's Genitals
This review of the literature examined the available evidence regarding the effects of what we call ‘female genital surgeries’ on women's health and sexuality. (t shows that the evidence on the consequences of female genital surgeries for health and sexuality is insufficient to support the powerful rhetoric that presents these practices as a grave danger to women's health. However, the scarcity of evidence is most likely due to the lack of concer…
Female Genital Surgeries
This article reviews the literature on female genital surgeries and examines the extent to which available research supports commonly accepted "facts" about the prevalence and harmful effects of these practices, in particular their possible health complications, and their effect on sexuality. While information regarding the prevalence of female genital surgeries is becoming increasingly available, the powerful discourse that depicts these practic…
Sexuality in Morocco
This paper offers a critical review of what is known about the expression of sexuality in Morocco, by bringing together several domains of research-studies of Islamic doctrine, anthropological research on sexuality, ethnographies of Muslim countries, as well as recent studies of sexual behaviours and attitudes in Morocco. The traditional context of sexual behaviour in Morocco was shaped by the dynamic interplay among several forces: A relatively …
Pluralism and Pragmatism
This article examines knowledge and practice surrounding birth in Morocco, using women's narratives of their recent birth experiences, observations of medical encounters, and statements about prescribed behaviors during pregnancy and birth, as well as the vocabulary used to refer to physiological processes, disease conditions, and social relationships. The analysis shows that the three major themes that define the traditional Moroccan ethnophysio…
Risk, uncertainty, and agency
This article critically examines the notion that Moroccan women's infrequent use of health facilities during pregnancy and birth results from their lack of awareness of the risks of childbirth. It argues that while ethnographic data appear at first to lend support to this hypothesis, a closer examination of the customs surrounding birth shows that ideas about risk are found in local constructions of childbirth. The choices women make regarding bi…
Correlates of the age at natural menopause in Morocco
The estimated age at natural menopause in Morocco is 1-3 years earlier than the median ages reported in industrialized countries and some developing countries. Factors that alter the frequency of ovulation or rate of follicular atresia appear to be important in determining the age at menopause
The Health Consequences of Female Circumcision
This two-part article addresses questions that have arisen in current debates on the health consequences of female circumcision. The first part responds to a critique of a 1999 article and focuses on three major points: the role of research and advocacy in discussions of harmful effects, the sort of evidence that is appropriate for measuring health effects, and the way in which different disciplines-demography, epidemiology, and anthropology-are …
Age at natural menopause in Spain and the United States
Our research was undertaken to determine the median age of natural menopause and correlates of the timing of menopause in Spain and the United States (U.S.). A population-based sample of 300 women from Madrid, Spain and a random sample of 293 women from Fallon Community Health plan (FCHP), a health maintenance organization (HMO) in central Massachusetts, were interviewed using a semi-structured questionnaire. Logit analysis and logistic regressio…
The consequences of female circumcision for health and sexuality
This systematic review of published sources between 1997 and 2005 shows that female circumcision is associated with some health consequences but that no statistically significant associations are documented for a number of health conditions. This is in part a result of the difficulty of designing studies on the more extensive operations (infibulation). The findings of the analysis can be summarized as follows: statistically higher risks are docum…
Determinants of hot flashes and night sweats
In logistic regression analyses, alcohol consumption was a significant predictor of vasomotor symptoms. A slightly different set of variables were associated with hot flashes compared to night sweats
Medication Use and Gender in Massachusetts
In this study, we investigate the extent to which women and men differ in patterns of medication use, based on quantitative and qualitative data from a household survey in Western Massachusetts. Using a broad definition of medications, 96% of the sample reported taking one or more medications in the month preceding the survey (86% if vitamins, supplements, and alternative medications are excluded). Twenty-one percent of respondents reported takin…
The Utilization of Testing and Counseling for HIV
Against the background of debates about expanding HIV testing and counseling, we summarize the evidence on the social and behavioral dimension of testing and its implications for programs. The discrepancy between acceptance of testing and returning for results and the difficulties of disclosure are examined in light of research on risk perceptions and the influence of gender and stigma. We also summarize the evidence on the provision of testing a…
Medicine (39 works) · Population (23 works) · Environmental health (22 works) · Sociology (22 works) · Political science (20 works) · Demography (19 works) · Global Maternal and Child Health (19 works) · Economic growth (15 works) · Psychology (15 works) · Economics (14 works)