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Dr. Kirk Dearden
Senior Technical Advisor, Nutrition & WASH
Dr. Kirk Dearden brings three decades of experience designing, implementing and evaluating a variety of nutrition and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) programs around the world.
He has worked short- and long-term in 35 countries. In both Nepal and Tanzania, Kirk directed programs for two large, integrated nutrition programs for Helen Keller International and IMA World Health. His work in fragile states has focused on neonatal mortality (West Bank/Gaza), development and testing of an NGO manual for measuring infant and young child feeding (Sierra Leone and refugee camps in Kenya), emergency response (Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan), and nutrition (South Sudan), among others.
Kirk has been a professor of global health at Brigham Young and Boston universities, where he trained development professionals and students in the use of quantitative and qualitative methods to assess the impact of programs on health behaviors and outcomes. He has authored 70 peer-reviewed publications covering a range of nutrition and child health topics.
Kirk holds a Dr.P.H. and M.P.H. in international health from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and completed his post-doctoral work at the International Center for Diarrheal Research, Bangladesh, through a USAID child survival fellowship at the Johns Hopkins University. He received his B.A. in Third World Development and Public Health from Boston University.