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Julie Rajaratnam

Julie Rajaratnam, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Global Health at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. She leads the mortality estimation methods work at IHME. Dr. Rajaratnam’s team of senior faculty, post-doctoral fellows, and post-bachelor fellows work to produce age- and sex-specific mortality estimates for more than 200 countries for the Global Burden of Disease 2005 project.

Before joining IHME, Dr. Rajaratnam was a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health. She was Principal Investigator for a study funded by the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that examined school and neighborhood variation in youth violence in Baltimore and developed innovative methods to account for overlapping levels of clustering.

While at Johns Hopkins, Dr. Rajaratnam was involved in a series of research studies, including child injuries in Baltimore, social isolation and its effect on depressive symptoms in mothers with young children, measurement of neighborhood characteristics in the field of maternal/child health, and the willingness to pay for an HIV/AIDS vaccine in Uganda.

Before pursuing her PhD in Baltimore, Dr. Rajaratnam worked at the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH) in Seattle and conducted qualitative research to inform development of medical devices and reproductive health technologies specifically designed for resource-poor settings.

She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Biology from Macalester College in St. Paul, MN, graduating with high honors. Dr. Rajaratnam received her PhD in Public Health at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Selected Publications:

1. Rajaratnam JK, Tran LN, Lopez AD, Murray CJL. Under review. Measuring under-five mortality: validation of new low-cost methods.
2. Obermeyer Z, Park CH, Rajaratnam JK, Gakidou E, Lopez AD, Murray CJL. Under review. Measuring adult mortality using sibling survival: a new analytical method and new results for 38 countries, 1970-2005.
3. Murray CJL, Rajaratnam JK, Marcus J, Laakso T, Lopez AD. Under review. Reducing ignorance about adult mortality: improving methods for evaluating the completeness of death registration.
4. Solorio MR, Mokdad AH, Lozano R, Rajaratnam JK. Under review. Measuring Hispanic immigrant mortality across international boundaries: a new research paradigm.
5. Rajaratnam JK, O’Campo P, Caughy M, Muntaner C. The effect of social isolation on depressive symptoms varies by neighborhood characteristics: a study of an urban sample of women with pre-school aged children. International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction. 2008; 6:464-75.
6. Rajaratnam JK, Burke JG, O’Campo P. Maternal and child health and neighborhood context: the selection and construction of area-level variables. Health and Place. 2006; 12:547-56.

Presentations

1. Rajaratnam JK, Levin-Rector A, Obermeyer Z, Gakidou E, Murray CJL. Estimating war deaths with population-based survey data. 2009 September; presented at the 26th International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP) International Population Conference, Marrakech, Morocco.
2. Obermeyer Z, Park CH, Rajaratnam JK, Gakidou E, Lopez AD, Murray CJL. 2009. Measuring adult mortality using sibling survival: new analytical methods and results for 38 countries, 1970-2005. 2009 September; presented at the 26th International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP) International Population Conference, Marrakech, Morocco.
3. Rajaratnam JK, Tran LN, Lopez AD, Murray CJL. Measuring under-five mortality: validation of new low-cost methods. 2009 September; poster presented at the 26th International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP) International Population Conference, Marrakech, Morocco.
4. Murray CJL, Laakso T, Rajaratnam JK, Lopez AD. Reducing ignorance about adult mortality: improving methods for evaluating the completeness of death registration. 2009 May 2; presented at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America Detroit, MI.

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