Kiersten Johnson
Food Security Monitoring and Evaluation, USAID
How I work with Harvest
Kiersten Johnson (USAID) is part of the Food Security Monitoring and Evaluation group at USAID Bureau for Food Security. She connects Harvest with ICF and the household survey community. The USAID Bureau of Food Security which leads the ‘Feed the Future’ (FTF) initiative recognizes that EO can play a critical role in their activities. BFS is interested in better understanding how EO data can be used for their project development, and program monitoring and evaluation, to increase smallholder resilience, agricultural productivity and development and to break down barriers to the uptake of EO information. Key areas of interest are drought and flood monitoring, risk assessment, improved cropped area and yield statistics, and crop failure probability measures. In addition, there is a strong interest from BFS to integrate EO-based variables into major USAID national and sub-national surveys, including the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS), FTF Zone of Influence, and Food for Peace surveys, exponentially increasing access to and use of EO data for socioeconomic analyses in the context of food security.
Biography
Dr. Johnson provides technical support for the monitoring and evaluation needs of USAID's Bureau for Food Security. The Bureau for Food Security, which leads the U.S. government's Feed the Future initiative, leverages the strengths of other U.S. government partners, multilateral institutions, NGOs, the private sector, universities and civil society organizations to support country-driven strategies, and invests in strengthening both public and private institutions that underpin growth in the agricultural sector. She has a background in surveys, remote sensing and climate change reviews for determining health impacts.
Selected Relevant Publications
- Facility-level services for obstetric fistula repair in Africa
- Environmental risk factors and child nutritional status and survival in a context of climate variability and change
- Using satellite remote sensing and household survey data to assess human health and nutrition response to environmental change
- Forest cover associated with improved child health and nutrition: evidence from the Malawi Demographic and Health Survey and satellite data.
- Using Demographic and Health Survey Data to Inform Climate-Resilient Development
