About Shelah Bloom

Issues of gender equity and equality have been central to Shelah’s life since she was a young girl. Early on, she was determined, both for herself and for other women and girls, to change the landscape limited by gender inequality. The health and well being of women and girls have been at the center of her work. Shelah started working in this area as an anthropology undergraduate at Hampshire College, where she investigated the roots and evolution of gender inequalities and inequities, exploring women’s power and influence through their life cycle in Varanasi, India. Shelah has worked extensively in South and Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and in sub-Saharan Africa. Today, she is widely recognized for her contributions to the gender and health field in the areas of gender-based violence, HIV and AIDS, SRHR, and maternal health.

Shelah holds a Doctorate in Population and International Health and a Master's in Maternal and Child Health from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; a Master's in South Asian Studies from the University of Wisconsin, Madison; and a Bachelor's in Anthropology and Creative Writing from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her post-doctoral fellowship at the Carolina Population Center (CPC) brought her and her two young sons from Brookline, Massachusetts to Chapel Hill, North Carolina in 1997.

 In 2001, at the end of her post-doc at CPC, Shelah was funded by a National Institutes of Health grant to conduct a five-year study on the relationship of gender inequality and the risk of HIV in North India. She accepted a faculty position in the Department of Maternal and Child Health at the UNC Gillings School of Public Health and began working with the MEASURE Evaluation project. In 2018, Shelah retired from her full time position at UNC to consult on a full time basis to continue her work in the field. She now holds an Adjunct Associate Professorship in the Gillings School of Public Health, Department of Maternal and Child Health.

Outside of work, Shelah spends much of her time training her dogs — three Border Collies and an Aussie — in the sport of dog agility. In 2018, Tovah (a Border Collie) and Shelah became Regional Champions in New England and the Mid-Atlantic Coast. Shelah moved back Massachusetts in 2022 where she lives on a small farm in Montague.