The Women’s Health Movement: Celebrating 50 Years of Our Bodies Ourselves

Nashira (she/her) is a biracial Black woman, is the daughter and great-granddaughter of midwives, who birthed both of her children at home and has experienced firsthand the transformative experience and liberation of midwifery support.

Nashira is the founder of Boston’s Neighborhood Birth Center, the city’s first freestanding birth center start up and co-founder and co-director of Birth Center Equity, a national strategy to redirect full spectrum capital to BIPOC-led birth centers. With a master’s degree in Maternal and Child Health from Boston University School of Public Health and nearly 20 years of experience designing and implementing public health strategies to advance racial equity, Nashira brings a structural analysis and emergent practice to the design and implementation of public health strategies that advance justice and equity. She has worked at the Boston Public Health Commission, Harvard School of Public Health, and most recently Human Impact Partners doing leadership development to advance practices of equity in governmental public health. A New Englander through and through, Nashira is from Connecticut, vacations in Vermont and Rhode Island, and lives in the Mattapan neighborhood of Boston with her husband and two kids.

Social innovator awarded by the United Nations and Rotary International for her outstanding contribution empowering thousands of Latin American girls and women. TED-Speaker, lawyer, author, and expert developing communities around innovation and women’s rights.

Charlie Ruth is an Alumni Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. Co-Founder of The Women With Rights Foundation (www.MujeresConDerechos.org), one of the most influential social movements in the field of gender empowerment in the Americas region.

Dr. Chavkin is Professor (Emerita) of Public Health and Obstetrics/Gynecology at Columbia University, Mailman School of Public Health and College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City. Dr. Chavkin co-founded Global Doctors for Choice in 2007 and previously helped found and served as Board chair of Physicians for Reproductive Health in the US. She has served as Director of The Bureau of Maternity Services and Family Planning in New York City’s Department of Health, Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of the American Medical Women’s Association, Associate Editor for The American Journal of Public Health and Director of several postdoctoral fellowship programs focused on reproductive health and rights. She has received various awards for advocacy and a Fulbright Fellowship for research on policy responses to declining birth rates Dr. Chavkin has written numerous peer reviewed articles and four books about a range of reproductive health issues and is a longtime admirer of Our Bodies Ourselves.