Jill Witney Ahs, PhD, MMedSci, is a mental health researcher with a background in global health. Her main research interests concern the epidemiology of child and adolescent mental health and suicide risk, population-level prevention and mental health promotion, and improving measurement and metrics in mental health. Jill likes using epidemiology to identify modifiable risk factors for mental disorders and suicide risk, with a focus on adolescents and young people. Jill was recently involved in the evaluation of a school-based mental health promotion intervention in Tamil Nadu, India. She is presently supporting research into the assessment and care for mental health of children in emergencies. Jill is deeply committed to training the next generation of global mental health researchers, and presently leads two courses for PhD students at the Karolinska Institute: Global Mental Health, and Global Public Health Research Ethics.
Jill completed her doctoral studies at the Karolinska Institute’s Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society, jointly with the Swedish Red Cross University. Jill has worked as a consultant for UNICEF Headquarters on mental health, global surveys, and child survival initiatives, dating back to 2011. She has also worked as a public mental health officer in Stockholm, Sweden, and in academic research at Dartmouth College and Duke University, USA, and the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. Jill is presently a Research Fellow at the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and a post-doctoral researcher at Karolinska Institutet, Department of Global Public Health in Sweden