Batya Elul (she/her/hers) is an Associate Professor of Epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. She has over 25 years of experience conducting applied research on HIV and reproductive health in resource-limited settings. Her work has been funded by NIH, CDC, USAID and private foundations. Since 2005, her research has focused on optimizing the HIV care continuum in the context of rapid expansion of HIV services in sub-Saharan Africa. She has a particular interest in using implementation science methods to identify effective and scalable health systems interventions to improve outcomes of adolescents living with HIV. From 2010–2014, she was the Director of Strategic Information at ICAP where she led efforts to collect, manage, analyze, and disseminate data on over 2.1 million people living with HIV enrolled in HIV care at 4,000 PEPFAR-supported clinics. Prior to joining Columbia University, Dr. Elul was a Program Associate at the Population Council in New York and New Delhi where she conducted clinical, social science, and community-based research on abortion in Asia and North Africa. Much of that work focused on making reproductive health technologies more accessible to women and simpler to use in resource-limited settings.
In addition to her research, Dr. Elul directs the Applied Practice Experience (APEx) in Mailman’s Epidemiology Department. In that capacity, she guides the Department’s 130 MPH students to apply their classroom learning to real-world public health problems in NYC, elsewhere in the US and abroad. She also teaches the School’s public health surveillance course and intensive courses in program evaluation for public health professionals, including at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Dr. Elul’s teaching approach extends beyond addressing theory and methods to providing trainees with skills they can take forward in professional settings.
