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Ozge Sensoy Bahar

Ozge Sensoy Bahar’s research focuses on child and family well-being in global contexts characterized by poverty and associated stressors. Within this broad research program, her research examines the multi-level factors that expose children, youth, and their families to social and economic vulnerabilities, such as engagement in child labor, sexual risk-taking behaviors, and poor mental health functioning, all of which are associated with poverty. 

Specifically, she seeks to develop contextually- and culturally-relevant interventions that are grounded in children, youth, and families’ experiences, and hence will be more likely to be acceptable and sustainable in the communities where they are implemented.

Her current NIH-funded research program focuses on youth experiences of child work and labor, as well as the individual, family, and contextual factors leading to child labor in two country contexts, Turkey and Ghana. The goal of her work is to develop culturally and contextually-relevant interventions to reduce risk factors associated with child labor.

In addition, Sensoy Bahar serves as a co-principal investigator/co-investigator qualitative expert on NIH-funded projects that test the effectiveness of combined interventions that incorporate the family economic empowerment intervention on sexual risk-taking behaviors and other psychosocial and health outcomes among vulnerable populations, including children, in Uganda.

Sensoy Bahar serves as the co-director of the International Center for Child Health and Development (ICHAD). This center works to reduce poverty and improve public health outcomes for children and families in low-resource settings in sub-Saharan Africa.

Ozge Sensoy Bahar

Areas of Focus:

  • Urban poverty in a global context
  • Child and family well-being
  • Child labor
  • Migration and internal displacement

In The News

ICHAD Celebrates its 10th Anniversary, and the Lives it Has Changed in Sub-Saharan Africa
April 10, 2023

A Cross-Continental Collaboration
August 11, 2022

NIMH Awards $2.4 Million for HIV/AIDS Research with Orphans in Sub-Saharan Africa
April 2, 2022

Faculty Co-Edit Book on Child Behavioral Health in Sub-Saharan Africa
January 24, 2022

Brown School Presentations at APHA 2021
October 25, 2021

Ssewamala Awarded $3.2 Million by NIMH to Address HIV Stigma in Ugandan Boarding Schools
September 27, 2021

$3.4 million NIH Grant Funds Research for HIV-Positive Youth in Sub-Saharan Africa
August 25, 2020

Ssewamala Nabunya to lead NIHfunded study on ways to reduce the stigma of HIVAIDS among adolescents in Uganda
July 13, 2020

Featured Publications

“ANZANSI program taught me many things in life”: Families’ experiences with a combination intervention to prevent adolescent girls’ unaccompanied migration for child labor.
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(20), 13168. doi: 10.3390/ijerph192013168
2022

"I expected little, although I learned a lot": Perceived benefits of participating in HIV risk reduction sessions among women engaged in sex work in Uganda.
BMC Women’s Health, 22, 162. doi: 10.1186/s12905-022-01759-1
2022