I am a social scientist with expertise in anthropology, epidemiology and population health. My PhD explored local environmental quality links with breastfeeding in the UK, and my research at LSE focussed on reproductive health in low and middle income countries. I am currently based at UCL's Institute for Global Health where I am working on the EVE Project, a research study to improve the evidence around preventing violence against women in the world’s highest prevalence settings. My longer term goal is to develop participatory action research to be based in Peru which aims to involve local communities in environmental monitoring activities and data collection and to ascertain links between self-defined key environmental concerns and maternal and reproductive health outcomes.
1. Leone, T., & Brown, L. J. (2020). Timing and determinants of age at menarche in low-income and middle-income countries. BMJ Global Health, 5(12), e003689. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2020-003689
· I conducted a scoping literature and data review and the statistical analysis of determinants using the Demographic and Health Survey data
2. Brown, Laura J., Myers, S., Page, A. E., & Emmott, E. H. (2020). Subjective Environmental Experiences and Women’s Breastfeeding Journeys: A Survival Analysis Using an Online Survey of UK Mothers. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(21), 7903. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17217903
· I conceptualised the study and conducted this secondary analysis
3. Brown, L. J., & Sear, R. (2019). Are mothers less likely to breastfeed in harsh environments? Physical environmental quality and breastfeeding in the Born in Bradford Study. Maternal & Child Nutrition, 15(4). https://doi.org/10.1111/mcn.12851
4. Brown, L. J., Tan, K. S., Guerra, L. E., Naidoo, C. J., & Nardone, A. (2018). Using behavioural insights to increase HIV self-sampling kit returns: a randomized controlled text message trial to improve England’s HIV self-sampling service. HIV Medicine, 19, 585–596. https://doi.org/10.1111/hiv.12634
5. Brown, L. J., & Sear, R. (2017). Local environmental quality positively predicts breastfeeding in the UK’s Millennium Cohort Study. Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, 2017(1), 120–135. https://doi.org/10.1093/emph/eox011
Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC), Environmental inequities and maternal health and behaviour: Building bridges from UK-based research to research in low- and middle-income countries (Postdoctoral Fellowship), 10/01/2019-09/31/2020
Economic & Social Research Council, Understanding socioeconomic disparities in breastfeeding in the UK: Exploring the role of environmental quality (PhD Scholarship with Advanced Quantitative Methods stipend), 10/01/2014-09/30/2017
ESRC/Population Investigation Committee, Area-level deprivation and breastfeeding in England: a quantitative analysis at Primary Care Trust level (Masters Studentship Scheme in Population Studies), 09/30/2013-09/19/2014