Rate My Professor Susan Sherman

Susan G. Sherman, PhD, MPH, is a Professor in the Department of Health, Behavior, and Society within the Health Science faculty at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she holds the endowed position of Bloomberg Professor of American Health, appointed in 2020. She earned her PhD from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2000, MPH from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1996, and BA from the University of Michigan in 1989. With joint appointments in the Departments of Population, Family and Reproductive Health, Epidemiology, and Mental Health, Sherman has been affiliated with Johns Hopkins since 1998. Her research specializes in improving the health of marginalized populations, particularly people who use drugs and women who sell sex, by examining structural drivers of health and risk through observational studies and interventions. She has over two decades of experience developing and evaluating HIV prevention, peer-outreach behavioral, and microenterprise interventions in Baltimore, Pakistan, Thailand, and India, with a focus on harm reduction, overdose prevention, syringe services, police interactions, economic and gender empowerment, and risk environments.

Sherman serves as Co-director of the Baltimore HIV Collaboratory and a member of the Executive Leadership Committee of the Johns Hopkins Center for AIDS Research. She is the founder of SPARC Women’s Center, a harm reduction drop-in center in Baltimore offering safer sex and drug supplies, opioid maintenance therapy, health care, legal services, case management, showers, laundry, clothing, and food pantry services to sex workers. As Board Chair of the National Harm Reduction Coalition and Co-lead of the Addiction and Overdose Workgroup for the Bloomberg American Health Initiative, she participates in Baltimore City and state advisory commissions on syringe exchange and overdose prevention initiatives and testifies regularly before the Maryland legislature and Congress using evidence to advocate for humane drug policies. Her scholarly impact is evident in highly cited publications such as "Burden of HIV among female sex workers in low-income and middle-income countries: a systematic review and meta-analysis" (2012), "Public health and international drug policy" (2016), "Associations between sex work laws and sex workers’ health: A systematic review and meta-analysis of quantitative and qualitative studies" (2018), and "Human rights violations against sex workers: burden and effect on HIV" (2015). Awards include the 2011 and 2006 Advising, Mentoring & Teaching Recognitions Awards from the Bloomberg School of Public Health, 2002 Delta Omega Society membership, and 1997-2000 NIMH Predoctoral Training Grant.