Ernestina Coast is Professor of Health and International Development in the Deptartment of International Development. Her research is multidisciplinary and positioned at an intersection of social science approaches including health, gender and development. As a social scientist with training in demography and anthropology, her research uses mixed methods (quantitative and qualitative) to understand the inter-relationships between social context and health-related behaviours, with a focus on sexual and reproductive health. She is the Principal Investigator of “Improving adolescent access to contraception and safe abortion in sub-Saharan Africa” and is the thematic lead for sexual and reproductive health on “Gender and Adolescence: Global Evidence”. Dr Coast has acted as adviser to a number of organisations, including DFID, UNAIDS, Marie Stopes International and DANIDA, and has been a Visiting Scholar at the African Population and Health Research Centre (APHRC).
Dr Coast supervises PhD students working on health-related topics in a range of countries, and is the Programme Co-Director for the MSc in Health & International Development. Dr Coast served as a member of the WHO Guideline Development Group for Maternal and Newborn Health (2014-16) and is a Board Member of the Guttmacher Institute.