M. Giovanna Merli, Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Sanford School of Public Policy, has been awarded a four-year R01 grant from the National Institutes of Health’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). Totaling $1,067,457 over four years, this grant addresses efforts to obtain valid estimates of the prevalence of sexually transmitted disease infection and risky and preventive health behaviors among female sex workers in China, with possible extensions to other hidden populations in different contexts. Merli and her research team, which includes Jim Moody of the Duke Department of Sociology, will work to improve the utility of Respondent Driven Sampling (RDS), an increasingly popular sampling method used to recruit samples of hidden populations, with data collected in China as part of various collaborative efforts with Ersheng Gao of Shanghai Fudan University, Sharon Weir and Gail Henderson of the Carolina Population Center and Xiangsheng Chen of Nanjing National Center for STD Control. Dr Merli is the Associate Director of DUPRI and directs the institute’s Developmental Core, and is also a member of the Duke Global Health Institute. View Abstract
