Laura Ferguson

Laura Ferguson is an associate professor of population and public health sciences at the University of Southern California, the director of the Program on Global Health & Human Rights and the director of research at the USC Institute on Inequalities in Global Health.

Her research focuses on understanding and addressing health system and societal factors affecting health and the uptake of health services as well as developing the evidence base of how attention to human rights can improve health outcomes. She is interested in innovative methodologies to better understand how societal-level interventions can improve health, and she has carried out many large-scale evaluations with this aim.

She collaborates with a range of United Nations agencies as well as foundations, universities and non-governmental organizations in different countries.

Dr. Ferguson has spent extended periods of time living and working in low-income countries, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa. Her work focuses primarily on HIV, sexual and reproductive health and child health.

She is also an associate editor for Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters and the American Journal of Public Health.

Ph.D., Global Public Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
MSc., Population and International Health, Harvard University
M.A., French and Spanish, University of Cambridge