Harvard Catalyst Profiles

Dr. Manasi Sharma is an epidemiologist at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and the Broad Institute at MIT and Harvard. Her research interests include global mental health, child and adolescent health, complex interventions in LMICs, social epidemiology, psychometrics, causal mediation analysis, qualitative research, community based participatory methods, and implementation science. Her research and capacity building efforts in population mental health have a three-fold focus. First, she applies various qualitative and quantitative approaches to contextualize and adapt culturally sensitive measures of trauma, resilience, and psychological distress among people living in LMICs and humanitarian settings. Second, she examines the associations between social determinants of health as risk and protective factors that influence the development of health outcomes. A specific focus is the application of social-ecological systems models in the study of psychological trauma, risk, and resilience. Third, her research synthesizes evidence on the effectiveness of mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) interventions, and she develops, implements, and evaluates evidence-based interventions, particularly among young people and marginalized communities in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Dr. Sharma did her PhD and postdoctoral training at the Harvard School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School, and worked at UNICEF (Office of Research, Office of Evaluation, and South East Asia Regional Head Office) after that for 5 years leading their mental health research and evaluation work. She is currently leading the scientific and analytic oversight of various global mental health studies in Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, South Africa, Madagascar and India, as well as population mental health activities at Harvard Chan. Dr. Sharma also has Masters training in clinical psychology and human rights law.