Ayesha Mahmud
· PhD Assistant ProfessorUniversity of California, Berkeley · Environmental Health Sciences
Active 2003–2026
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About
Ayesha S. Mahmud is an Associate Professor in the Department of Demography at the University of California, Berkeley. She is a demographer with broad research interests focused on the interplay between human population changes, environmental factors, and infectious disease dynamics. Her work integrates theory and methods from demography and disease ecology to address key questions such as the timing of outbreaks, variations in the mortality burden of infectious diseases over time, the influence of population travel patterns on the spatial dynamics of outbreaks, and the impact of global environmental and demographic changes on the future landscape of infectious disease burden. Mahmud employs statistical methods and biologically mechanistic models to investigate these questions across multiple diseases in countries in Asia, Africa, and Central America. Her research utilizes diverse data sources including disease surveillance systems, hospital databases, climate models, human mobility data, and population surveys and censuses. Prior to joining Berkeley, she was a Rockefeller Foundation Planetary Health Fellow at Harvard University. She earned her Ph.D. in Demography from Princeton University in 2017.
Research topics
- Medicine
- Economics
- Sociology
- Computer Science
- Environmental health
- Operations management
- Geography
- Demography
- Emergency medicine
- Engineering
Selected publications
Infectious disease in an era of global change
Nature Reviews Microbiology · 2021 · 1915 citations
Socioeconomic status determines COVID-19 incidence and related mortality in Santiago, Chile
Science · 2021 · 460 citations
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected cities particularly hard. Here, we provide an in-depth characterization of disease incidence and mortality and their dependence on demographic and socioeconomic strata in Santiago, a highly segregated city and the capital of Chile. Our analyses show a strong association between socioeconomic status and both COVID-19 outcomes and public health capacity. People living in municipalities with low socioeconomic status did not reduce their mobility during lockdowns a…
BMJ · 2020 · 224 citations
OBJECTIVE: To understand the epidemiology and burden of severe coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) during the first epidemic wave on the west coast of the United States. DESIGN: Prospective cohort study. SETTING: Kaiser Permanente integrated healthcare delivery systems serving populations in northern California, southern California, and Washington state. PARTICIPANTS: 1840 people with a first acute hospital admission for confirmed covid-19 by 22 April 2020, among 9 596 321 healthcare plan enroll…
The Lancet · 2022 · 71 citations
BACKGROUND: The 2015 Lancet Commission on global surgery identified surgery and anaesthesia as indispensable parts of holistic health-care systems. However, COVID-19 exposed the fragility of planned surgical services around the world, which have also been neglected in pandemic recovery planning. This study aimed to develop and validate a novel index to support local elective surgical system strengthening and address growing backlogs. METHODS: First, we performed an international consultation thr…
British journal of surgery · 2023 · 58 citations
BACKGROUND: Healthcare cannot achieve net-zero carbon without addressing operating theatres. The aim of this study was to prioritize feasible interventions to reduce the environmental impact of operating theatres. METHODS: This study adopted a four-phase Delphi consensus co-prioritization methodology. In phase 1, a systematic review of published interventions and global consultation of perioperative healthcare professionals were used to longlist interventions. In phase 2, iterative thematic anal…
Frequent coauthors
- 45 shared
Caroline O. Buckee
Harvard University
- 34 shared
Richard J. Maude
Mahidol University
- 31 shared
Pamela P. Martinez
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
- 23 shared
Mohammad Yunus
State University of Gorontalo
- 20 shared
Olivo Miotto
Mahidol University
- 17 shared
Ipsita Sinha
University of Oxford
- 17 shared
Pablo A. Marquet
Santa Fe Institute
- 16 shared
David A. Sack
Education
- 2017
PhD in Demography, Office of Population Research
Princeton University
Awards & honors
- Rockefeller Foundation Planetary Health Fellow at Harvard Un…
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