CUPC Research Presentation: Audrey Dorélien

Audrey Dorélien, Assistant Professor of Global Policy, University of Minnesota

Demography and migration in four urban slums in Port-au-Prince Haiti

GHESKIO (Haitian Group for the Study of Kaposi’s Sarcoma and Opportunistic Infections) is a non-governmental organization located in downtown Port-au-Prince. GHESKIO is the largest provider of integrated services for HIV/TB in Haiti, however GHESKIO is increasingly focusing on population-based care and research. From July 2016 to October 2016, researchers at GHESKIO, CUNY, Weil Cornell and the University of Minnesota designed and implemented a cross-sectional demographic health survey (DHS) in four slum neighborhoods: Village de Dieu, Cite Plus, Cite l’Eternel and Martissant. These communities, which neighbor the GHESKIO center and have the nickname Kosovo, cover an area of just under one square kilometer, and have an estimated population of 60,000-100,000 inhabitants.

There is very little research on demography and health in slums, which is especially concerning given increasing rates of urbanization in settings such as Haiti where the urban infrastructure has not kept pace with the increasing numbers of slum dwellers. The GHESKIO DHS survey contains questions on household demographic composition, migration history, mortality, anthropometry, and infectious and non-communicable diseases. One of the most interesting findings is that the slums are overwhelmingly female and that there are fewer children than one would expect. We present some preliminary analysis that might help explain the feminization of these slums.

About Dr. Dorélien:

Audrey Dorélien is an assistant professor at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs and an affiliate of the Minnesota Population Center at the University of Minnesota. Prior to joining the Humphrey faculty, she was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar at the University of Michigan’s Population Studies Center and Center for Social Epidemiology and Population Health. She earned her PhD in Public Policy from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs with a concentration in demography from the Office of Population Research.

Audrey Dorélien is an interdisciplinary researcher concerned with the intersection of demography, health, and public policy. Her research agenda centers on how human population dynamics and behavior intersect with the environment to affect health. Her past work has focused on birth seasonality and its implications for child health, and on spatial demography, vulnerability to climate change, and human health. Recent work analyzes the effects of early life exposures (especially seasonal factors) on child health in the sub-Saharan Africa and the United States. A native of Haiti, Audrey has recently had the opportunity to participate in some demographic and health research projects in Haiti.

Audrey’s research has appeared in Population Development Review, Demographic Research, Biodemography and Social Biology, Population Health Metrics, and PLoS ONE.