Departmental Affiliations
Center & Institute Affiliations
Research Interests
mHealth; digital health; International Health; maternal, newborn, and child health; community health workers; evaluation of community based interventions; costing and cost-effectiveness; equity
Additional Links
Experiences & Accomplishments
Education
PhD
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
2010
MHA
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
2002
Overview
My research interests remain focused on the conduct of evaluations of maternal, newborn and child health (MNCH) interventions in low and middle-income countries. Much of my work to date has focused on the design, implementation, and evaluation of new technologies and community-based packages of integrated MNCH services, including conducting health impact and outcome assessments; economic analyses (cost-effectiveness/ utility, equity); assessments of MNCH service availability and accessibility; quality of care; health information systems; and ensuring the sufficiency and optimal use of human resources. In recent years, I have additionally worked on numerous large-scale evaluations aimed quantifying burden of disease (e.g maternal and child mortality in Afghanistan); exploring optimal service integration (e.g. Family planning into a platform of MNCH services in Bangladesh); and/or improving services delivery (e.g. midwifery services in Afghanistan; effectiveness of community health workers and community to facility linkages in Tanzania and Bangladesh, etc.).
Beyond my broader interests in MNCH and evaluation research, I am presently the M&E Technical Lead for the Johns Hopkins University Global mHealth Initiative. In this capacity, I focus heavily on evaluating the use of digital health technologies to bridge critical gaps in service delivery and access to care in LMICs. I presently lead a large 13 state evaluation of two the largest digital health programs in India and globally: Kilkari and Mobile Academy. Evaluation activities include a randomized controlled trial in 4 districts of Madhya Pradesh; an economic evaluation; big data analytics and machine learning; phone surveys; and a portfolio of qualitative research activities, including cognitive testing to enhance survey tools. Based in South Africa, I maintain an additional portfolio of digital health research activities in the region and teach a course on the evaluation of digital health programs at the University of Cape Town.
Beyond my broader interests in MNCH and evaluation research, I am presently the M&E Technical Lead for the Johns Hopkins University Global mHealth Initiative. In this capacity, I focus heavily on evaluating the use of digital health technologies to bridge critical gaps in service delivery and access to care in LMICs. I presently lead a large 13 state evaluation of two the largest digital health programs in India and globally: Kilkari and Mobile Academy. Evaluation activities include a randomized controlled trial in 4 districts of Madhya Pradesh; an economic evaluation; big data analytics and machine learning; phone surveys; and a portfolio of qualitative research activities, including cognitive testing to enhance survey tools. Based in South Africa, I maintain an additional portfolio of digital health research activities in the region and teach a course on the evaluation of digital health programs at the University of Cape Town.
Select Publications
5 select publications representing a broad spectrum of work on digital health, MNCH program evaluation, and economic evaluation are listed below.
- LeFevre AE, Dane P, Copley C, Pienaar C, Parsons AN, Engelhard M, Woods D, Bekker M, Benjamin P, Pillay Y, Barron P, Seebregts CJ, Mohan D. Unpacking the performance of a mobile health information messaging program for mothers (MomConnect) in South Africa: evidence on messaging reach and platform effectiveness. BMJ Global Health, April 2018 Volume 3, Issue Suppl 2. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2017-000583
- Agarwal S, LeFevre AE, Lee J, L’Engle K, Mehl G, Sinha C, and Labrique A. Guidelines for Reporting mHealth Evidence: the mHealth Evidence Reporting and Assessment (mERA) tool. BMJ 2016;352:i1174 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.i1174
- LeFevre AE, Mohan D, Hutchful D, Jennings L, Mehl G, Labrique A, Romano K, and Moorthy A. Mobile Technology for Community Health in Ghana: what happens when technical functionality threatens the effectiveness of digital health programs? BMC Med Inform Decis Mak. 2017 Mar 14;17(1):27. doi: 10.1186/s12911-017-0421-9.
- LeFevre AE, Mohan D, Mazumder S, Lamberti L, Taneja S, Black RE, and Fischer-Walker CL. Diarrhea no more, does zinc help the poor? Evidence on the effectiveness of programmatic efforts to reach poorest in delivering zinc and ORS at scale in UP and Gujarat, India. Journal for Global Health 2016. DOI: 10.7189/jogh.06.021001
- Bartlett LA, LeFevre AE, Mir F, Soofi S, Arif S, Mitra DK, Quaiyum MA, Shakoor S, Islam MS, Conner NE, Winch PJ, Reller ME, Shah R, El Arifeen S, Baqui A, Bhutta ZA, Zaidi A, Saha S, and Ahmed SA. Development of a community-based clinical diagnosis tool and treatment regimen for maternal puerperal sepsis. Reprod Health. 2016; 13: 16. Published online 2016 Feb 25. doi: 10.1186/s12978-016-0124-1
Projects
Economic Evaluation of Community Distribution of Zinc for the Treatment of Diarrhea in India, Mali and Pakistan
Multi-country economic evaluation of neonatal health care programs
Economic Evaluation of Topical Emollients in Pre-term Infants
Economic Evaluation of a Community Based Intervention for Reducing Neonatal Mortality in Sindh, Pakistan
Evaluation of national scaling up of therapeutic provision of zinc for the treatment of diarrhea in children 1-59 months in Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat, India
Supplement to Aetiology of Neonatal Infection in South Asia: Development and evaluation of a community-based presumptive clinical diagnosis algorithm and treatment regimen for maternal puerperal sepsis
Design and coordination of a national M&E framework for the introduction of mobile registration of 1 million pregnant women in South Africa
Evaluation of integrated community-facility MNCH program in Morogoro, Tanzania
Defining an evaluation roadmap for mHealth Initiatives: Working Papers on mHealth Classification, Evaluation, Indicators and Evidence Grading
National Maternal Mortality Study in Afghanistan (Reproductive Age Mortality Survey)
Healthy Fertility Study: Operations research to address unmet need for contraception in the postpartum period in Sylhet District, Bangladesh
Evaluation of Low dose high frequency vs. traditional workshop based approaches to training of health care providers in emergency obstetric and newborn care in two states of Nigera
Evaluating integrated chronic care for people living with HIV
mCARE II in Bangladesh
Using mobile technology to improve continuity and timely utilization of reproductive maternal newborn and child health services in South Africa: THRIVE Multi-site Phase 1 protocol for formative, adaptation, and field assessment research of Open Smart ...
Microexperiments of MomConnect: Can we use digital tools to rapidly collect data to improve program performance?
Kilkari Evaluation