Understanding the organization of perinatal healthcare, knowledge regimes of integrated perinatal healthcare professions, and the perinatal patient experience:
One aim of my research draws from my nearly two-decade career as a mental health clinician. I have worked as a clinician in integrated healthcare settings and private therapy practices with a specialty in mental health experiences as they relate to fertility, reproduction, and the perinatal period. I am interested in understanding the consequences of the highly specialized and hierarchical nature of healthcare, particularly as I draw from my experience as a member of a marginalized health profession. My research thus focuses on the organization of healthcare with specific attention to the social, structural, and cultural conditions that shape professional socialization, knowledge and expertise, interdisciplinary relationships, and the trickle-down effect of these on patient care. My most recent independent project explores how behavioral health is integrated in perinatal healthcare settings, illuminating gains and consequences for clinicians and patients. I have collaborated with other social scientists, health services researchers, and clinician researchers, offering qualitative methodology expertise to enhance clinical research on sleep in pregnancy and a study examining perinatal health clinicians’ racial bias for the development of a clinician training program. My current collaborative research explores optimal postpartum care models with a focus on community-based midwifery. Results from these research projects have been published or are forthcoming in academic journals and presented at professional conferences.
One aim of my research draws from my nearly two-decade career as a mental health clinician. I have worked as a clinician in integrated healthcare settings and private therapy practices with a specialty in mental health experiences as they relate to fertility, reproduction, and the perinatal period. I am interested in understanding the consequences of the highly specialized and hierarchical nature of healthcare, particularly as I draw from my experience as a member of a marginalized health profession. My research thus focuses on the organization of healthcare with specific attention to the social, structural, and cultural conditions that shape professional socialization, knowledge and expertise, interdisciplinary relationships, and the trickle-down effect of these on patient care. My most recent independent project explores how behavioral health is integrated in perinatal healthcare settings, illuminating gains and consequences for clinicians and patients. I have collaborated with other social scientists, health services researchers, and clinician researchers, offering qualitative methodology expertise to enhance clinical research on sleep in pregnancy and a study examining perinatal health clinicians’ racial bias for the development of a clinician training program. My current collaborative research explores optimal postpartum care models with a focus on community-based midwifery. Results from these research projects have been published or are forthcoming in academic journals and presented at professional conferences.
Critical study of reproduction and the family in United States society:
A second focus of my research addresses reproduction and parenthood in the United States, examining political vacillations and socio-cultural norms impacting birthing people and their families. Early in my graduate training as a sociologist, I began studying adoption and third-party reproduction via gamete “donation.” Through interviews with adopted and donor-conceived adults, I was able to understand effects of state-mediated severing of kinship ties, practices of anonymity, secrecy, and historical norms of the family across the lifespan. As reproductive freedom is continuously threatened in the U.S., my work in this arena has evolved to illuminate taken-for-granted ideals about nuclear family, fertility, and adoption, and the conditions (such as abortion restrictions and poverty) that render family separation and adoption possible. Situating these issues within the Reproductive Justice framework, my critical work centers the experiences of those most impacted by family policing and adoption idealism—adoptees and birth mothers—and incorporates a fundamental understanding of the structural forces at play in the making and separating of families. I have presented the results of my critical adoption studies at professional conferences and published this work in academic and popular outlets.
A second focus of my research addresses reproduction and parenthood in the United States, examining political vacillations and socio-cultural norms impacting birthing people and their families. Early in my graduate training as a sociologist, I began studying adoption and third-party reproduction via gamete “donation.” Through interviews with adopted and donor-conceived adults, I was able to understand effects of state-mediated severing of kinship ties, practices of anonymity, secrecy, and historical norms of the family across the lifespan. As reproductive freedom is continuously threatened in the U.S., my work in this arena has evolved to illuminate taken-for-granted ideals about nuclear family, fertility, and adoption, and the conditions (such as abortion restrictions and poverty) that render family separation and adoption possible. Situating these issues within the Reproductive Justice framework, my critical work centers the experiences of those most impacted by family policing and adoption idealism—adoptees and birth mothers—and incorporates a fundamental understanding of the structural forces at play in the making and separating of families. I have presented the results of my critical adoption studies at professional conferences and published this work in academic and popular outlets.