Nicole Maddox Dempah, Ph.D.

Dr. Maddox Dempah is a public health researcher with over 15 years of experience providing leadership and technical support in complex and high-impact local and international programs. She is an enthusiastic problem solver with an eye for data science and analytics and a knack for turning data into actionable insights to support investments that transform lives. Her professional track record of adapting to changing priorities in a fast-paced environment delivers high-quality results for clients. 

Having lived and worked in international settings, Maddox Dempah has worked on numerous technical assistance projects related COVID-19, adolescent girls and women’s health, and support for People Living with HIV (PLHIV).

At Abt, she leads several project tasks for the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Maddox Dempah provides a menu of data-driven technical assistance to global teams and partners, adapting to  each client’s unique needs and goals. Over the past two years, she has directly provided in-country support in Panama, Jamaica, Malawi, Zambia, and Ivory Coast.

Before joining the company, Maddox Dempah served as a technology consulting advisor at CDC where she oversaw the agency’s Coronavirus Self-Checker, an online triage tool for COVID-19 to assess individuals’ symptoms, exposure risks, underlying health conditions, and other factors to advise about proper next steps. She facilitated cross-sector partnerships with Apple and Google to provide data for their symptom tools as well. Since launch, the Coronavirus Self-Checker tool has had more than 45 million visits. 

Prior to her work with the CDC, she was a co-investigator at the Population Council to support a final data collection activity for the Adolescent Girls’ Initiative in Kenya (AGI-K), a four-year longitudinal study. The project aimed to reduce the prevalence of early marriage, teenage pregnancy, unsafe sexual activity, violence, and HIV. In this capacity, she facilitated data collection in two regions in Kenya with more than 4,500 participants.

As a consultant to the Center for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia (CIDRZ), Maddox Dempah researched and analyzed data for the Preterm Resources, Education, and Effective Management for Infants (PREEMI) program, aiming to reduce mortality and complications among preterm infants. Her monthly reports for the Ministry of Health and other key stakeholders, ultimately advanced policy and care improvements throughout the nation.

Expertise

• Monitoring and evaluation
• Data-driven program design
• Comprehensive program reviews
• Policy and health system strengthening

Key Projects

• Global Division Technical Assistance Project (GTAP), HRSA
• Infectious Disease Detection and Surveillance: Tuberculosis Network Analysis, USAID
• Local Health System Sustainability Project Jamaica, USAID
• Pediatric Research Observing Trends and Exposures in COVID-19 Timelines (PROTECT) Study, Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC)
• Baltimore Health Corp (BHC) Evaluation, Mayor’s Office of Economic Development

Publications

• Shah AB, Oyegun E, Hampton WB, Neri A, Maddox N, Raso D, Sandhu P, Patel A, Koonin LM, Lee L, Roper, L, Whitfield G, Siegel DA, Koumans EH. (2-23). Engagement with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Coronavirus Self-Checker and guidance provided to users in the United States from March 23, 2020, to April 19, 2021: thematic and trend analysis. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 25:e39054
• Wado YD, Austrian K, Abuya BA, Kangwana B, Maddox N, Karibu CW. (2022). Exposure to violence, adverse life events and the mental health of adolescent girls in Nairobi slums. BMC Women’s Health 22, 156
• Austrian K, Soler-Hampejsek E, Kangwana B, Maddox N, Diaw M, Wado Y, Abuya B, Muluve E, Mbushi F, Mohammed H, Aden A, Maluccio J. (2022). Marriage and fertility after 4 years in pastoralist Kenya: a randomized trial. Journal of Adolescent Health, 1-10. 
• Koyama A, Siegel D, Oyegun E, Hampton W, Maddox N, Koumans E. (2021). Symptoms associated with risk new onset anosmia or ageusia in individuals with and without SARS-CoV-2 infection. JAMA Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery, 147(10), 911-914. 
• McCloud Faulkenberry R, Awoke Bekalu M, Maddox N, Minsky S, & Vinswanath K. (2019). Leveraging breadth and depth: strategies to characterize population diversity to address cancer disparities in the DF/HCC catchment area. Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention, 28(3), 435-441.
• Chanda-Kapata P, Klinkenberg E, Maddox N, Kapata N. (2015). The prevalence and socio-economic determinants of HIV among teenagers aged 15-18 years who were participating in a mobile testing population based survey in 2013-2014 in Zambia. BMC Infectious Diseases. 16(1), 789-796.