Dr. Dabney Evans of the Center for Humanitarian Emergencies at Emory’s Rollins School of Public Health

On January 13, we’re joined by Dr. Dabney Evans, director of the Center for Humanitarian Emergencies at Emory’s Rollins School of Public Health, for a discussion on human trafficking and violence against women.

Dabney P. Evans, PhD, MPH is an exceptional public health leader, serving as an Associate Professor of Global Health at the Hubert Department of Health in the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. She is a mixed-methods researcher of issues affecting vulnerable populations at the intersection of public health and human rights. Dr. Evans received her Master of Public Health degree in 1998 from Emory University and her doctoral degree in law from the University of Aberdeen (UK) in 2011. She is architect and Director of the Center for Humanitarian Emergencies in the Rollins School of Public Health and the Emory University Institute of Human Rights – both focus on capacity building.  In July 2017 she assumed the position of Interim director for the Emory University Institute of Developing Nations.

As one of the first faculty to include health and human rights in the public health curriculum, Dr. Evans is an established teacher and trainer. Since 2010 her teaching and training activities have touched over 19,000 learners from 171 countries; she is responsible for the training of one in every ten employees at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  Dr. Evans was the instructor of the first English language massive open online course on Ebola Virus Disease and a Coursera on Health in Humanitarian Emergencies. She was the instructor of the “University Course” on Global Security and Leadership in a Complex World.  She has mentored over forty Master’s theses. 

Through her scholarly research, Dr. Evans has charted new interdisciplinary paths uniting public health, human rights and humanitarian response. Dr. Evans’ current research projects focus on sexual and reproductive health, and gender-based violence.  Her current work includes a study of the relationship between anti-femicide legislation and of intimate partner violence in Brazil.   

An editor of the text, Rights-Based Approaches to Health, Dr. Evans has advanced human rights discourse across a range of public health issues.  Dr. Evans has published over thirty book chapters, scholarly articles and commissioned works; she has made over 100 peer-reviewed and invited presentations.  Her public scholarship has appeared in the Pacific Standard, the Atlanta Journal Constitution and The Hill, where she is a regular contributor; in 2015 she presented a TEDx talk. She is on several editorial boards.

Dr. Evans is a member of the Delta Omega Public Health Honor Society, Omicron Delta Kappa National Service Honor Society, past-president of the Georgia Federation of Professional Health Educators, and chair of the Human Rights Forum of the American Public Health Association. She is the recipient of numerous awards including the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Service Award (2007), the Crystal Apple for excellence in professional school education (2015), the Unsung Heroine Award (2016), the American Public Health Association Mid-Career Award in International Health (2017) and the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health Early Career Teaching Award (2018). She is a Board member of Medical Education in Cooperation with Cuba (MEDICC) and represents Emory University on the steering committee of the Interagency Working Group on Reproductive Health in Crisis. 

She is fluent in Portuguese.