Anna Mia Ekström

MD, MPH, PhD

Anna Mia Ekström received her Master’s of Public Health from Harvard School of Public Health in 1995, MD in 1997 (Uppsala University) and PhD in medical epidemiology at Karolinska Institutet (KI) in 2000. She received a full clinical professorship in 2013 in Global Infectious Disease Epidemiology at KI and has 20 years of experience in leading international research projects primarily in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.

Ekström combines clinical work as a senior consultant in infectious diseases with research and leads the Global & Sexual Health research group at KI, home of late professor Hans Rosling’s teaching legacy. Her research focus is on HIV, infectious disease outbreaks, sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), harm reduction, gender-based violence (GBV), female genital mutilation, social norms, health systems and policy evaluation. She serves as an expert on the Swedish International Development Agency’s scientific council, KI’s Ethical council, Doctors Against AIDS and the Global Challenges think tank, and was part of INDEPTH’s scientific advisory group.

Ekström is currently an expert member of Sweden’s scientific reference group for access to COVID-19 vaccines, coordinated by the Swedish Foreign Department. She leads KI’s taskforce on COVID-19 and public health, analyzing public health and vaccine related aspects of COVID-19 in Sweden, and KI’s resource group on COVID-19 and global health research. She is the primary investigator for population surveys on the COVID-19 crisis’ impact on social and gender norms and young women’s economic empowerment in LMIC including India, Rwanda, Ethiopia. She also studies the impact of the crisis on GBV among HIV-positive and negative youth in South Africa. In Uganda, Kenya, Malawi and Myanmar she leads ongoing research on the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on GBV, teenage pregnancies, food security, mental health and access to HIV prevention, care and harm reduction.