The Future of Reproductive Care in the U.S.

Lee Hasselbacher is Research Assistant Professor and Faculty Director at The Center for Interdisciplinary Inquiry and Innovation in Sexual and Reproductive Health (Ci3) at The University of Chicago.

Lee leads Ci3’s reproductive health policy research, collecting data and translating research to inform policy debates and legislation. She collaborates with health providers, advocates, and UChicago researchers to achieve evidence-based policy reform. Her policy-related research covers topics such as access to contraception and abortion, health care reform, religious refusals in health care, and consent and confidentiality for young people. Lee specializes in qualitative research to uncover the practical impact of laws and policies on equitable access to reproductive health care.

Lee is a graduate of Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, where she focused on law and social policy, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She previously worked for Human Rights Watch and served as a law clerk with the ACLU of Illinois’ Reproductive Rights Program and the Center for Reproductive Rights.’

Whitney S. Rice, DrPH, MPH is a Rollins Assistant Professor in the Department of Behavioral, Social and Health Education Sciences at the Emory University Rollins School of Public Health (RSPH), and Director of the Center for Reproductive Health Research in the Southeast (RISE). Dr. Rice leverages training and transdisciplinary expertise from health care organization and policy, health services research, and maternal and child health disciplines in the pursuit of greater equity in sexual and reproductive health outcomes, care delivery, and scholarship. Her research program to date has examined social and structural challenges and opportunities (e.g., stigma, discrimination, policy change) for equitable  psychosocial and health outcomes as well as healthcare access and use, particularly in family planning, HIV prevention, and perinatal health settings. Dr. Rice is committed to lived experience -centered production and translation of scientific evidence, and to the mentorship and inclusion of trainees in this work. In recognition of these efforts, she was awarded the 2019 Outstanding Young Professional Award by the American Public Health Association Sexual and Reproductive Health Section and the inaugural RSPH Faculty Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Leadership Award in 2023.

Dr. Rowley is board certified in pediatrics and preventive medicine. She has spent 30 years examining infant and pregnancy health disparities. She is involved in conceptualizing health inequity and in creating tools to evaluate institutional equity.

Jody Steinauer, MD, PhD is the Philip D. Darney Distinguished Professor of Family Planning and Reproductive Health in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences based at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital (ZSFG). She is the Director of the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health and the Director of the Kenneth J. Ryan Residency Training Program in Family Planning. After medical school and residency at UCSF she completed a fellowship in Complex Family Planning, during which she completed a Master’s Degree in clinical research in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics. She then completed a PhD in Health Professions Education from the University Medical Center Utrecht – UCSF joint program. She focuses her research on family planning training, professional identity formation in medical learners, and the experiences of students and residents learning to provide patient-centered care. She provides obstetric and gynecologic care and teaches learners at ZSFG, and she teaches how to teach empathetic, patient-centered care worldwide.

Rebekah P. Viloria MD, FACOG joined Fenway Health in 2015 as a member of the Obstetrics & Gynecology department. Dr. Viloria’s areas of expertise include abnormal pap smears, transgender/GNC gynecologic and obstetrics, and contraceptive management.

Abigail Aiken is an associate professor at the LBJ School. Her research focuses on unintended pregnancy, evidence-based obstetric practice, and the impacts of laws and policies restricting access to abortion, including how and why people self-manage their own abortions outside the formal health care setting. She is currently the PI on Project SANA, examining self-managed abortion in the United States. She frequently testifies on reproductive health issues, and provided expert testimony to the Irish Parliament on the 2018 abortion referendum. She has consulted for the CDC, WHO and UN on various reproductive policy issues. She completed her M.D. at the University of Cambridge, her MPH at Harvard University, and her Ph.D. at The University of Texas at Austin.