Lynn Lieberman Lawry M.D, M.S.P.H, M.Sc

Education

M.Sc. Harvard School of Public Health, Epidemiology, Boston, MA - 1998
M.D. East Carolina University School of Medicine, Greenville, NC - 1992
M.S.P.H. University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Parasitology, Chapel Hill, NC - 1988
B.S North Carolina State University, Zoology, Raleigh, NC - 1985

2000-2002
Fireman Fellow in Health and Human Rights
Physician for Human Rights
Boston, Massachusetts

1998-2000
Medical Foundation Fellow/Charles A. King Trust
Clinical and Community Health Research Fellow
Harvard Medical School
Boston, Massachusetts

1996-1998
Clinical Fellow in Medicine
Harvard Medical School
Boston, Massachusetts

1996-1998
General Medicine Fellow
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Harvard Medical School
Boston, Massachusetts

1995-1996
Chief Resident
Internal Medicine
Providence Veteran's Medical Administration
Brown University School of Medicine
Providence, Rhode Island

1992-1995
Intern and Resident
Internal Medicine
Rhode Island Hospital
Brown University School of Medicine
Providence, Rhode Island

1994
Visiting Teaching Resident
Internal Medicine
Nyanza General Hospital

Biography

Dr Lieberman Lawry, a Full Professor in Preventive Medicine and Biostatistics at USUHS, is a physician, epidemiologist and biostatistician. She has more than three decades of experience in humanitarian aid, disaster response, development and global health implementation and research. During her career she has led, managed, and conducted baseline, midterm, and final evaluations using quantitative and qualitative methodologies that adapt traditional epidemiology to austere environments to yield evidence-based and contextualized prevalence data. She is globally known as an expert on documenting humanitarian needs in austere settings, health and human rights, maternal, newborn and child health, and gender based violence. Her data appear in more than 60 highly competitive peer-reviewed medical, public health, social science and legal journals and textbooks. She spent 20 years as faculty in the Women’s Health Division at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and concurrently held an appointment with the Department of International Health, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University.

Employed by non-governmental organizations throughout her career, she has extensive experience in more than two dozen countries coordinating the provision of aid and facilitating development during which time she conducted population-based studies and impact evaluations, collecting quantitative and qualitative data in conflict and post-conflict settings -- almost all of which were limited-resource or insecure environments. She has worked and continues to work as a development expert, implementing in post-disaster, post-conflict and in purely development settings. Her studies cover programmatic health status indicators and demographic data to assess impact and/or define a baseline of health status of populations that elucidate the needs -- utilizing these data to improve policy and programmatic impact to address global health needs in disparate contexts.

She began her international career in Rwanda and eastern Zaire in 1994 during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. She went on to work in eastern DRC in 1997; Kosovo and Albania during the conflict, genocide and refugee crisis in 1998-99; and more than a dozen other countries such as Chad, Darfur, Afghanistan, Mongolia, China and Thailand. She spent considerable time in Afghanistan and Pakistan between 1999-2009. She worked in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, completing a population-based household study comparing health status among women refugee camps in Pakistan and women in Taliban-controlled areas with Northern Alliance areas -- data that are all published in peer-reviewed medical and public health journals. She researched and published extensively on women’s health and human rights issues in Afghanistan, Iraq (2003-2004), Nigeria, Darfur, South Sudan, DRC, Liberia, Kenya, and Sierra Leone covering mental health, and health consequences of human rights violations and the denial of rights and the health and human rights complexities of migrants traversing Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Tanzania from Somalia and Ethiopia. Prior to coming back to USUHS she worked on projects funded by USAID and other donors in northern and eastern regions of Madagascar, in extremely remote areas of the DRC, in Malawi, South Sudan, Mali, Afghanistan and in Ukraine. Her work has required working across interagency contexts including local governments, donors, NGOs, the UN and beneficiaries to improve policy and develop pragmatic recommendations to improve the health status of those most in need. Her work at USU has taken her to more than 34 countries for implementing prevention of gender based violence workshops using a curriculum she developed for military and civilian leaders and Peacekeepers. Research during her time at USUHS includes assessing gender based violence in DRC, maternal newborn child health, GBV, WASH and nutrition in South Sudan, assessing the needs of Ebola survivors in DRC and an evaluation of the health and trauma system in Ukraine.

She earned her medical degree at East Carolina University School of Medicine, a Master of Science in Public Health from the University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill and a Masters of Science in Epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Lawry completed residency training in internal medicine at Brown University, served as Chief Resident at the VA Medical Center in Providence, Rhode Island, and completed a two-year General Medicine research fellowship with Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Harvard Medical School and a two-year Health and Human Rights fellowship with Physicians for Human Rights.

Career Highlights: Positions, Projects, Deployements, Awards and Additional Publications

Johnson K, Asher J, Kisielewski M, Lawry L. Former Combatants in Liberia: The Burden of Possible Traumatic Brain Injury among Demobilized Combatants. Mil Med. 2012. 177(5):531-540.

Johnson K, Scott J, Rughita B, Asher J, Kisielewski M. Ong R, Lawry L. Association of Sexual Violence and Human Rights Violations with Physical and Mental Health in Territories of the Democratic Republic of Congo. JAMA. 2010. 304(5):553-562.

Bourdeaux M, Lawry L, Bonventre E. Burkle F. The Department of Defense’s Involvement in Civilian Assistance, Part I: A Quantitative Description of the Projects Funded by the U.S. Department of Defense’s Overseas Humanitarian Assistance, Disaster and Civic Aid Program. Disaster Med Public Health Prep. 2010. 4: 66-73.

Auerbach PS, Norris RL, Menon AS, Brown IP, Kuah S, Schwieger J, Kinyon J, Helderman TN, Lawry L. Civil–Military Collaboration in the Initial Medical Response to the Earthquake in Haiti. N Engl J Med. 2010 Feb 24 (10.1056/NEJMp1001555)

Laraby P, Bourdeaux M, Casscells W, Smith D, Lawry L. Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief: Changing the Face of Defense. Am J Disaster Med. 2009. 4(1):33-40.

Anastario M, Shehab N, Lawry L. Increased Gender-Based Violence Among Women Internally Displaced in Mississippi Two Years Post Hurricane Katrina. Disaster Med Public Health Prep. 2009; 3:18-26.

Anastario M, Larrance R, Lawry L. Using Mental Health Indicators to Identify Post-Disaster Gender Based Violence Among Women Displaced by Hurricane Katrina. J Women’s Health. 2008; 17(9):1437-44.

Shehab N, Anastario M, Lawry L. Access to care among displaced Mississippi residents in FEMA travel trailer parks two years after Katrina. Health Aff (Millwood). 2008 Sep-Oct;27(5): w416-29. Epub 2008 Aug 29.

Johnson K, Asher-Resnick J, Rosborough S, Raja A, Panjabi R, Beadling C, Lawry L. Association of Combatant Status and Sexual Violence with Health and Mental Health Outcomes in Post-Conflict Liberia. JAMA. 2008 Aug 13;300(6):676-90.

Kim G, Griffin S, Nadem H, Aria J, Lawry L. Rapid Evaluation of The Afghan Family Health Book: Impact on Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practice. Pre-Hospital and Disaster Medicine 2008 May-Jun;23(3):218-26.

Representative Bibliography

Lawry, LL Korona-Bailey, J, Juman, L, Janvrin, M, Donici, V, Kychyn, I, Maddox, J, Koehlmoos, TP. A qualitative assessment of Ukraine’s trauma system during the Russian conflict: experiences of volunteer healthcare providers. Confl Health 2024;18:10. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13031-024-00570-z

Lynn Lieberman Lawry, MD, MSPH, MSc, Review of Humanitarian Guidelines to Ensure the Health and Well-being of Afghan Refugees on U.S. Military Bases, Military Medicine, 2022;, usac086, https://doi.org/10.1093/milmed/usac086

Kiggundu R, Wittenauer R, Waswa JP, Nakambale HN, Kitutu F, Murungi M, Okuna N, Morries S, Lawry LL, Joshi MP, Stergachis A, Konduri N. Point prevalence survey of antibiotic use across 13 hospitals in Uganda. Antibiotics 2022; 11(2):199. DOI: 10.3390/antibiotics11020199

Lawry LL, Stroupe-Kannappan N, Canteli C, Clemmer W. A Cross-sectional Study of Mental Health and Sexual Behaviours for Ebola Survivors in Beni, Butembo and Katwa Health Zones of the Democratic Republic of Congo. BMJ Open 2022;12(2):e052306. DOI:10.1136/bmjopen-2021-052306. PMID: 35110316

Lawry LL, Stroupe-Kannappan N, Canteli C, Clemmer W. A Mixed Methods Assessment of Health and Mental Health Characteristics and Barriers to Health Care for Ebola Survivors in Beni, Butembo and Katwa Health Zones of the Democratic Republic of Congo. BMJ Open 2021;0:e050349. DOI:10.1136/ bmjopen-2021-050349

Lawry LL, Robles-Lugo R, McIver V. Improvements to a framework for gender and emerging infectious diseases. Bull World Health Organ 2021; BLT.20.275636

Lawry L, Covadonga C, Rabenzanahary T, and Pramana W. A Mixed Methods Assessment of Barriers to Maternal, Newborn and Child Health in Gogrial West, South Sudan. Reproductive Health. 2017. DOI: 10.1186/s12978-016-0269-y

Lawry L, de Brouwer A-M, Smeulers A, Rosa JC, Kisielewski M, Johnson K, Scott J, Wieczorek J. The Use of Population-Based Surveys for Prosecutions at the International Criminal Court: A Case Study of Democratic Republic of Congo. International Criminal Justice Review. 2014; 24:1 doi:10.1177/1057567714523982

Johnson K, Scott J, Sasyniuk T, Ndetei D, Kisielewski M, Rouhani S, Bartels S, Mutiso V, Mbwayo A, Rae D, Lawry L. A National Population-Based Assessment of 2007-2008 Election-Related Violence in Kenya. Conflict and Health. 2014; 8:2 (epub ahead of print) doi:10.1186/1752-1505-8-2

Scott J, Polak S, Kisielewski M, McGraw Gross M, Johnson K, Hendrickson M, and Lawry L. A Mixed-Methods Assessment of Sexual and Gender-based Violence in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo to Inform National and International Strategy Implementation. International J of Health Planning and Management. 2012; DOI: 10.1002/hpm.2144