Kelly Perry

Senior technical officer at FHI 360 | Chiang Mai, Thailand

Project Overview

Civil society voices and narratives are missing from public conversations on air pollution. Currently, while the science behind air pollution is unequivocal, its public representation is not, with official accounts perpetuating existing inequities by narrowly determining how crises are defined and selectively narrating who is impacted by them. To decenter this inequity, the pilot study proposes to use innovative participatory futures methods to gather civil society perspectives, particularly individuals working in the nonprofit and NGO spaces, on the plausible, possible, and probable future solutions to air pollution and its impact on people’s health as well as social and economic implications on wellbeing. This is to ensure that 1) civil society perspectives inform future policy and programmatic recommendations for addressing air pollution, and 2) that civil society perspectives are centered to combat the continued misinformation propagated by private industries.

The air pollution crisis in Thailand is remediable, though the onus on addressing it cannot be pinned to road commuters or low-wealth farmers. Futures methods will serve as a useful approach to center civil society voices to identify innovative solutions and reshape the public narrative around air pollution.

About Kelly

Kelly brings demonstrated leadership and diverse experience in healthcare research, academia, business development, and public health nonprofit work. As a Senior Technical Officer at FHI 360, she leverages her public health research and storytelling background to spearhead Asia Pacific’s regional thought leadership strategy.

Kelly has studied and worked in the United States, Thailand, Morocco, and South Africa and collaborates with colleagues and organizations across Asia and the Pacific. Kelly is a 2022 Emerging Voices for Global Health fellow, a Wedu board member, a Steering Committee member within the Society for Health Policy Young Professionals (SHPYP), and an adjunct professor at UNC Chapel Hill. She holds an MPH from UNC Chapel Hill and a BA from Vanderbilt University. Kelly looks forward to being a part of the inaugural cohort of IFL fellows, conducting her project on civil society perceptions of and proposed solutions to the air pollution crisis in Thailand.