Abigail Greenleaf

Dr. Abigail (Abba) Greenleaf is a public health demographer whose research focuses on (1) women’s reproductive health across geographies and the lifespan and; (2) intensive longitudinal data collection. By integrating these areas, she is creating innovative findings for international sexual and reproductive health population sciences. She enjoys leveraging innovative data collection approaches to generate high-frequency, cost- efficient population data for public health action.

After a public health class in college introduced her to the field, Dr. Greenleaf joined the Peace Corps to understand public health in a global context, and she spent two years in Cameroon. She then pursued an MPH at Columbia and after she worked for Centers for Disease Control as an Allan Rosenfield Global Health Fellow in Ethiopia and Cameroon. She earned her PhD in the Population, Family and Reproductive Health Department at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health before coming back to Columbia. In addition to her research, Dr. Greenleaf spends a portion of her time teaching. She co-teaches "Research Design and Data Collection" for public health graduate students and she mirrors her own educational path by co-teaching an undergraduate class, "Data Science and Health Equity in New York City". The undergraduates learn how to use data science to unpack health inequities in New York City.