PHR Director of Programs Karen Naimer moderates a discussion on COVID-19 and gender-based violence featuring Wangechi Wachira and Drs. Claudia Garcia-Moreno and Lori Heise. The conversation addresses how the pandemic has exacerbated the crisis of sexual and gender-based violence and intimate partner violence on a global scale, how existing response programs may be adapted to protect survivors amid restrictions on movement during the pandemic, and possible solutions and policies to protect survivors and prevent and/or reduce violence in the long-term.
Distinguished panelists
- Claudia Garcia-Moreno, MSc heads the World Health Organization’s Department of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Research unit addressing vulnerable populations. She has built a career in public health and global health policy, with a focus on women’s health, sexual and reproductive health, and HIV/AIDS. Since joining WHO in 1985, Dr. Garcia-Moreno has led the agency’s work on gender and women’s health and violence against women, including coordinating the WHO Multi-Country Study on Women’s Health and Domestic Violence and co-leading the first global and regional estimates on intimate partner violence and sexual violence against women. She is founder and past chair of the Sexual Violence Research Initiative (SVRI) and is SVRI forum chair of the What Works to Prevent Violence Against Women and Girls Programme.
- Lori Heise, PhD is professor of gender violence and health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, with a joint appointment in the School of Nursing. Her expertise is in the areas of gender equity, social change, and women’s economic and social empowerment. She is an internationally recognized expert on the causes and consequences of violence against women and is co-investigator on the What Works to Prevent Violence Against Women and Girls Programme, a six-year, multi-million-dollar project to reduce gender-based violence in low- and middle-income countries. She serves as technical director of the Prevention Collaborative, a global initiative designed to support evidence-based gender-based violence prevention programming in the Global South.
- Wangechi Wachira, MA is executive director of the Centre for Rights Education and Awareness (CREAW) in Kenya. Her experience in advocacy, gender integration and inclusion, resource mobilization, and program management drives her work leading this national feminist women’s rights organization working to build a just society where women and girls experience full rights and social justice. Previously, she was a project officer at the NGO Council coordinating activities on economic recovery and the millennium development goals.