Tsega Gebreyesus

Tsega Gebreyesus is a rising fifth year doctoral candidate at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She was born and raised in a community of Ethiopian and Eritrean refugees in the United States. For the past ten years, she pursued studies, internships and volunteer activities in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. During this time, she received a B.A. in Anthropology from Bryn Mawr College and a Masters in Global Epidemiology from Columbia University. She joined the Social and Behavioral Interventions Program in the Department of International Health at the Johns Hopkins University in 2010. As the subject of her doctoral dissertation, she conducted a qualitative study exploring the factors affecting the sexual and reproductive health of Eritrean asylum-seeking women living in Tel Aviv, Israel. In addition to designing and implementing her research, she volunteered as a translator for the Physicians for Human Rights Open Clinic, and the African Refugee Development Center. The combination of her background, training and experiences serve as a foundation for her interest in understanding the multiple-level causes of forced migration and the challenges faced by asylum-seekers and refugees in accessing health care in their host countries.