FEBRUARY 2023
Reproductive Justice and
Black Maternal Health Outcomes
Data shows that Black women have worse pregnancy outcomes, lose more infants in the first year of life and have higher rates of preterm birth and stillbirth, when compared with white women. These findings have resulted in the medical establishment acknowledging and confronting its biases. Many health systems have mandated anti-bias training for faculty, including implicit bias.

IHPS faculty member, Sarah Garrett, PhD, led the MEND study: Multi-Stakeholder Engagement with State Policies to Advance Antiracism in Maternal Health. The multiple-methods project engaged Black women and birthing people, socio-legal scholars, perinatal clinicians, and a fully-funded community advisory panel of Black mothers to develop evidence-based guidance for California law (SB464) that requires perinatal clinicians to undergo implicit bias training, with the goal of improving care and outcomes for Black birthing people. Recently, California lawmakers introduced a bill that would strengthen compliance of the law by setting a firm deadline for maternal care facilities to fully complete a required anti-bias training and impose penalties for those that don’t comply.

Sarah is currently researching how different health systems approach mitigating disparities in maternal health. She will develop a survey to capture organizational influences on these mitigation efforts; and develop a community-informed and community-accountable systems-change agenda for the next generation of equity interventions. A birth equity stakeholder advisory board (BIPOC community members, clinicians, scholars) is guiding and advising the project.

Reproductive justice for black women also is an issue in the carceral setting. IHPS faculty Jennifer James, PhD, MS, MSW is currently conducting community based research on the forced sterilizations that occurred in California’s women’s prisons. She discusses lessons black feminists have taught us about reproductive justice and abolition in a recent article.
IHPS Faculty Spotlight
Dr. Leslie Suen is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the UCSF Division of General Internal Medicine at San Francisco General Hospital. She is also affiliate faculty at the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, the UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations, the UCSF Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies, and the UCSF Partnerships for Research in Implementation Science for Equity (PRISE) Center. Dr. Suen works as a primary care and addiction medicine physician and health services researcher. Her research focuses on using implementation science to improve health systems, policies, and outcomes for people with substance use disorders.
Current Issues
A recent Washington Post article discusses the expansion in some states, including California, of Medicaid to address social determinants of health, particularly housing and food insecurity. For the Biden administration, the focus on such needs jibes with efforts to lessen health inequities, including the recent U.S. Playbook to Address Social Determinants of Health. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) worked for more than a year with the White House and other government departments and,in November, produced guidelines on what services states can add under Medicaid — including up to six months’ rent, utility subsidies and nutritious food. States can devote no more than 3 percent of their overall Medicaid spending to such experiments. They must chip in state money and evaluate the effects.

IHPS researchers have long worked on food insecurity and housing insecurity as determinants of health. Hilary Seligman, MD, MAS has provided her policy and advocacy expertise focus on federal nutrition programs (particularly SNAP), food banking and the charitable food network, hunger policy, food affordability and access, and income-related drivers of food choice.

Margot Kushel, MD is the director of the UCSF Benioff Homeless and Housing Initiative (BHHI) which provides accurate, timely, policy-oriented research about homelessness for local, state, and national policymakers and practitioners, with the goal of ending homelessness.
Upcoming Events
2024 Chancellor's Health Policy Lecture
Reflections on Federal Service and Harvard’s Legacy of Slavery Initiative


Sara Bleich, PhD
Vice Provost for Special Projects at Harvard University, Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at Harvard Radcliffe Institute
Professor of Public Health Policy at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Harvard University
Mar 12, 2024, 12 - 1 pm PT
Register here
Research Highlights
Lauren Shapiro, MD, MS and colleagues published 




Media Mentions
Philip R. Lee Fellowship Fund Endowed
Since its founding 50 years ago, IHPS has been dedicated to training the next generation of leaders in interdisciplinary research to solve our most important health policy issues. In celebration of our 50th anniversary and to honor our founders, Phil Lee and Lew Butler, we established an endowment fund for the Philip R. Lee Fellowship. We are pleased to announce the fund has been endowed! We hope to continue to keep this fund and our fellowship program robust. Please consider donating at our dedicated webpage!