Research Fellow (PhD or Postdoctoral) - LMIC Family Planning

GF Family Planning Survey Initiative — Manuscript Fellowship
Surgo Health is building the Behavioral Intelligence layer for healthcare — revealing why people behave as they do, predicting what they will do next, and helping organizations make the decisions that change outcomes. A Public Benefit Corporation grounded in two decades of global health experience, Surgo generates foundational behavioral data that reveals the unseen why and builds the AI products that powers decision-grade insights at population scale — equipping healthcare organizations, funders, and public agencies to act on what actually shapes health outcomes: people's beliefs, motivations, and barriers. From predicting who will enroll and remain in a clinical trial, to understanding what drives treatment decisions, to designing more effective health programs, Surgo brings the missing human layer into decisions traditionally made with clinical data alone.

Backed by 40+ peer-reviewed publications and trusted by partners including the Gates Foundation, J&J, Takeda, Pivotal Ventures, and the Clinton Health Access Initiative, Surgo is building a future where healthcare organizations don't just understand human behavior, but anticipate it — making healthcare more personal, precise, and effective for everyone.

Role Summary

We are inviting applications for a Research Fellow to join Surgo Health’s Gates Foundation (GF)-funded Family Planning initiative, a multi-country study spanning Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria (Kano, Kaduna, and Lagos states), and Pakistan (Sindh).This fellowship is centered on manuscript production. Fellows will collaborate closely with Surgo's research team to advance a priority research question – building on analysis and framing already underway – through to a submission-ready manuscript for a peer-reviewed journal.

What you’ll achieve:

What You’ll Achieve

• Develop and lead a manuscript around an agreed priority research question, building on existing analyses and data and conducting additional analyses as needed

• Produce a submission-ready, publication-quality manuscript for a peer-reviewed journal

• Translate complex survey and causal-modeling findings into insights relevant to global health policy and program design

• Contribute to Surgo Health’s growing portfolio of family planning research and thought leadership in low- and middle-income country (LMIC) contexts

Research Focus Areas

Priority Papers

You will lead on completing the analysis that has already been started. With this, you will write the manuscript, with guidance and support from the research leads throughout.

• Couples-linked segmentation in Northern Nigeria (Kano and Kaduna): How do women's and their partners' own attitudes toward family planning align or diverge, and what does this mean for programs designed to shift partner-related norms? This work links directly to an active program partnership focused on norm-shifting interventions in the region.

• Rethinking how we measure FP intention (Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, Pakistan/Sindh): Standard measures of contraceptive intention – a binary yes/no, or a 12-month time horizon – may obscure meaningful variation in fertility desire, intent strength, near-term planning, and confidence. This paper aims to describe how we have developed and tested a more multidimensional approach to measuring intent across three countries.

• Patterns of change in FP attitudes and behaviors over time in FP journeys (Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, Nigeria [Kano and Kaduna], Pakistan [Sindh]): Using panel data collected roughly a year to two after baseline, this paper aims to characterize which women's contraceptive trajectories are "sticky", and tests which baseline predictors of conversion, intent development, and discontinuation generalize across countries versus which are context-specific.

Additional Areas of Interest

If none of the priority papers above are the right fit, the following list is intended to spark ideas rather than define the boundaries. If you have an interesting idea that isn't included here, please feel free to propose it.

• Determinants of contraceptive intention, uptake, and method choice in Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, Nigeria (Kano, Kaduna, Lagos), and Pakistan (Sindh)

• Causal inference approaches to family planning behavior (e.g., Bayesian networks, causal forests, propensity score matching, doubly robust/DoubleML methods, G-computation)

• Segmentation-informed analysis using belief- and behavior-based segments to explain heterogeneous contraceptive outcomes

• Comparative, cross-country analysis of family planning drivers and structural barriers

• Subgroup and geographic vulnerability (e.g., state-level variation, rural/urban differences, adolescent and youth subpopulations)

• Contraceptive discontinuation and continuation dynamics

• Comparative methodology, including analysis that contextualizes findings alongside established survey instruments (e.g., DHS, PMA)

Data Available to Fellows

Fellows will work with de-identified data from Surgo's Gates Foundation-funded multi-country Family Planning study: a cross-sectional baseline survey plus a longitudinal follow-up conducted at a later point in time, across Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, Nigeria, and Pakistan (Sindh).
Baseline: Women's FP Survey — Representative baseline surveys of women of reproductive age (15–49), covering fertility intentions, contraceptive use and method choice, household decision-making, perceptions and norms, health system access, and information exposure. Data was collected in 2024 to early 2025 depending on the geography. Sample sizes range from roughly 7,000 women in Senegal to around 10,000 in Côte d'Ivoire and Pakistan (Sindh), with Nigeria in between. In Nigeria, the baseline covers three states — Lagos, Kano, and Kaduna.

Baseline subset: Male Partner Interviews — In a smaller subset of baseline households, the woman's male partner also completed a companion interview, capturing his perspective on decision-making, approval, and household dynamics — enabling dyadic/couple-level analysis. Partner interviews were conducted with roughly one in ten baseline households in most countries, somewhat higher in Nigeria.

Follow-up: Longitudinal Women's Survey — A subset of baseline women who consented to re-contact were re-interviewed roughly one to two years after baseline to track changes in intentions, behavior, and access over time. This enables analysis of intention-to-behavior gaps, method continuation/discontinuation, and segment transitions. Follow-up samples range from under 2,000 women in Senegal to several thousand in Côte d'Ivoire, Nigeria (Kano and Kaduna), and Pakistan (Sindh), split between women who were contraceptive users and non-users at baseline.

Fellows will receive final sample sizes, codebooks, and documentation upon onboarding.

What You’ll Do

• Develop and lead a research paper within agreed priority areas, either building on existing analyses and insights from the GF-funded multi-country family planning studies or developing a new research question using the available data, with additional analyses as needed.

• Synthesize and translate existing findings and/or generate new analyses to deepen understanding of the mechanisms, risk factors, and protective factors shaping family planning behaviors and outcomes.

• If applicable, utilize rigorous quantitative and/or causal inference methods appropriate to the research question

• Draft and revise a manuscript for submission to a peer-reviewed journal, incorporating feedback from Surgo’s research team

• Collaborate with Surgo’s research scientists for methodological guidance and framing

Expected Outputs

• One submission-ready manuscript for a peer-reviewed journal (primary deliverable)

• Clean, documented analysis code and supporting analytic materials if appropriate

Program Structure & Support

Selected Fellows will receive:

• Access to de-identified, multi-country f