George Odwe

George Odwe is a senior program officer at the Population Council. He provides technical leadership and contributes to the development and implementation of ongoing and new project activities. Odwe currently provides technical support for the implementation of operations research projects that evaluate interventions for responding to the service needs of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) survivors in the East, Horn, and Great Lakes Region of Africa. He also provides technical support to the implementation and evaluation of a program that helps teenage mothers return to school in Kenya; and implementation research studies aimed at scaling up Possible Severe Bacterial Infection (PSBI) Guidelines in Kenya and improving maternal, newborn, and child health (MNCH) outcomes among vulnerable populations in informal settlements. 

Odwe has been a principal investigator or co-investigator on a number of studies, including the 2019 Kenya Violence Against Children Survey, Integration of Subcutaneous Depot Medroxyprogesterone Acetate (DMPA-SC) into the method mix in Uganda, and a longitudinal study that aimed at improving measurement of unintended pregnancy and explored reasons for unmet need for family planning (Under STEP-UP’s RPC-Funded by DFID). 

Before joining the Council, Odwe was a research fellow at the Population Studies and Research Institute (PSRI) at the University of Nairobi. He provided technical support to the implementation of their Poverty and Fertility Project, a three-year study that re-examined the impacts of female autonomy on fertility, child mortality, and poverty. 

Odwe has a PhD in population studies from the University of Nairobi and is a recipient of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation’s doctoral scholarship award under the Population and Poverty (PopPov) Research Initiative.