Monique  Hennink

Dr. Monique Hennink is Professor in the Hubert Department of Global Health in the Rollins School of Public Health and Associated Faculty in Sociology at Emory University. She is also Visiting Professor at University of Michigan, Department of Epidemiology, and Instructor at the University of Columbia's EPISUMMER program in Epidemiology. She earned her PhD in Demography in the United Kingdom.

Dr Hennink was indicted into Emory’s MilliPub Club in 2023 and 2024 for two research papers. This honors faculty authors of a scientific publication with over 1,000 citations - considered high impact scholarship. She received the 2020 Provost’s Distinguished Teaching Award for Excellence in Graduate and Professional Education at Emory University. She also received the 'Excellence in Research' Award in 2019 and the 'Excellence in Teaching' Award in 2016 at the Rollins School of Public Health.

She has particular expertise in applying qualitative research to examine public health issues. She has 30 years’ experience in the design, conduct, analysis, and publication of qualitative health research. She has authored five textbooks on qualitative research, including: Qualitative Research Methods 2nd edition (2020); Focus Group Discussions (2014), Qualitative Research Methods (2011) (also translated into Chinese) and International Focus Group Discussions (2007). She teaches graduate-level courses in qualitative research at Emory University. She developed the 'QUAL-WORKS' (http://tinyurl.com/rsph-qr) training program for public health professionals. Her courses, workshops and books reflect the application of qualitative methods in globally diverse settings and provide guidance on how to balance methodological rigor with the practical realities of global research. She has also published on various methodological aspects of qualitative research, such as using interpreters and translators in qualitative research; the effect of using court reporters on data quality; estimating sample size in qualitative studies; and highlighting emerging methodological issues in focus group research. She is a board member for SAGE Publications on their ‘Cases in Methodology’ work, and is on the editorial board of the International Journal of Multiple Research Approaches. She co-chaired a three-year scientific panel for the International Union of the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP), on ‘Qualitative Research in Population Studies’ which had a mandate to promote rigor in the use of qualitative methods in the discipline. She has led scientific sessions on qualitative research at key professional forums, such as: International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry; International Institute for Qualitative Methods; European Association of Population Studies; and the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population.

Her research focuses on understanding the social, cultural and contextual influences on behavior around public health issues in order to develop effective health interventions. She focuses primarily on sexual and reproductive health, sanitation behavior and chronic disease management. She has conducted studies to examine sexual risk taking amongst mobile populations; sex education and sexual behavior of adolescents in different cultural contexts; cultural norms surrounding contraceptive use; influences on sex trafficking; and the context of sexual risk taking after male circumcision. She has also conducted research on women’s empowerment, such as the contribution of microcredit to empowerment and health improvement; whether microcredit can be strengthened to enhance poverty reduction; and how empowerment influences maternal health. She is core faculty in the Centre for Global Safe Water, Sanitation and Hygiene at Emory University and conducts collaborative research on behavioral influences on sanitation behavior in developing countries. For example, behavioral influences on latrine use; the influence of social networks on purchasing household water filters; gender and water management; and pathways of fecal contamination in urban slums. She is an affiliated faculty member of the Global Diabetes Research Centre and conducts collaborative studies on tailoring lifestyle interventions to population groups at heightened risk for diabetes in the US and internationally.