Dr. Jennifer Toller Erausquin and fellow researchers were putting the final touches on a public health survey they would pilot for the World Health Organization when a stunning event took precedence: the onset of the global COVID-19 pandemic.
She was on her way home from Kenya – from an international meeting related to that project – when the world changed in what seemed like an instant. “Three days before my return, major U.S. airports started screening passengers for symptoms,” she recalls.
The associate professor in public health education couldn’t imagine then just how broadly the pandemic would affect all our lives, including her main area of research: sexual and reproductive health.
Her team was able to pivot, translating their multi-country survey into an online format and adding questions related to COVID-19 – particularly how the pandemic affected people’s sexual relationships and access to related health services.
“My expertise is ‘how do you get people to talk about a very intimate part of their lives,’” she says.