Postdoctoral Fellows

Current Fellows

 

 

Daniel Suárez-Baquero RN, MSN, PhD

Postdoctoral Fellow, 2021-present

Daniel received his Ph.D. in Nursing from the University of Texas at Austin, a BSN and MSN in Maternal/Perinatal Nursing Care from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Daniel has worked as a labor and delivery nurse, nurse midwife, and nurse administrator; this professional path complements his academic one guided by qualitative research on perception, nursing care, nursing epistemology, nursing theory, maternity, and pregnancy. His research and practice concern women/maternal/perinatal health, risk reduction for urban/rural ethnic minority women, and nursing theory. Daniel's research interests are framed by women’s reproductive life and health. Daniel has focused his work on Latin American Studies and Qualitative Research methods across his home country, Colombia, as a means of retribution to women. The long-term goals in his career are pregnancy risk reduction for urban/rural ethnic minority women (especially, Afro-descendant and Latina/e/x) and the decolonization of nursing theory and nursing knowledge. Daniel aims to continue studying topics that highlight the role of doulas, midwives, and traditional birth attendants in reproductive justice.

Samantha Auerbach, PhD, MSN, BSN, WHNP-BC

Postdoctoral Fellow, 2023-Present 

Sam Auerbach earned a PhD in Nursing from the University at Buffalo and a BSN and MSN in Nursing from the Massachusetts General Hospital Institute of Health Professions. She is a sexual and reproductive health Nurse Practitioner (WHNP-BC) with clinical experience in contraceptive and abortion care. Her program of research examines individuals’ attitudes towards pregnancy, abortion, and contraception, and their relation to behavior and the sociostructural context in which reproductive health decisions are made. Her dissertation work focused on contraceptive decisions among residents of Appalachia and highlighted the role of structural barriers, such as lack of insurance coverage and economic marginalization, and pregnancy attitudes, such as perceived subfertility and pregnancy fatalism, on contraceptive behavior. Using a reproductive justice lens to reflect how systems can constrain behavior choices and shape one’s attitudes and reproductive aspirations, her work aims to dismantle structural barriers to abortion and contraceptive care while centering the reproductive goals and autonomy of the individual.

 

Past Fellows

Toni Bond

 

Toni M. Bond, MA, PhD 

Postdoctoral Fellow, 2020-2022

Toni M. Bond received her doctoral degree in philosophy in religion, ethics, and society from Claremont School of Theology. A womanist ethicist and expert in the field of reproductive justice, Dr. Bond is one of the twelve Black women who coined the term “reproductive justice” in 1994. Her research is informed by reproductive justice and is situated at the intersections of religion and reproductive and sexual justice. She is advancing the field of reproductive justice through her qualitative research on the impact of oppressive theological doctrines in the reproductive and sexual lives of Black women. Dr. Bond is also researching the unique forms of harassment and violence experienced by abortion care providers of color. Her current work is aimed at (1) identifying the number of abortion care providers of color in the US, (2) collecting their oral narratives about the harassment they have experienced by anti-choice proponents who use race and religion as tactics, and (3) developing resources to support abortion care providers of color who experience racial and religiously-based harassment.

 

 

Amy Alspaugh

 

Amy Alspaugh, RN, CNM, MSN, PhD

Postdoctoral Fellow, 2020-2021

Amy is a Certified Nurse-Midwife in North Carolina. After receiving an MSN from Vanderbilt University’s School of Nursing, she worked in a local health department family planning clinic. While pursuing a PhD at the Medical University of South Carolina, her research focused on qualitatively exploring the reproductive health experiences of women in midlife. She currently works as an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee College of Nursing.

 

Renee headshot

Renée Mehra, MS, PhD  

Postdoctoral Fellow, 2020-2022

Renée Mehra was awarded a doctoral degree in public health from Yale University. Her research explores how social and psychosocial factors influence inequities in maternal and infant health. Using ecosocial and intersectionality frameworks, her research examines mechanistic pathways and health and social policies that may reduce these health inequities. In particular, she examines how structural and interpersonal stigma influence racial and ethnic disparities in adverse birth outcomes. Additionally, she uses mixed methods research to examine and advocate for healthcare models and health policies to improve access and adequacy of prenatal care, such as sustainability of community health worker programs for reproductive-age women, and expansion of Medicaid coverage for doulas.

Zoe Samudzi

Zoé Samudzi, MSc, PhD  

Postdoctoral Fellow, 2021-2022

Zoé Samudzi received her Ph.D. in Medical Sociology from the University of California, San Francisco. Her dissertation was about German imperialism, colonial biomedicine, and the Ovaherero and Nama genocide (1904-1908) and its afterlife. She previously received an MSc from the London School of Economics during which time she conducted research about trans women sex workers in Cape Town and how their marginalized gender identities and criminalized labor made them particularly vulnerable to HIV and gender-based violence. Combining her work on trans health and eugenic science, her postdoctoral work seeks to centralize gender self-determination in reproductive justice and Black feminist frameworks. Her particular interests are in the epistemic tensions in reproductive science and health practice, necropolitics with regards to resource deprivation and preventable death, and hegemonic productions of race-gender identity.

Alicia Swartz

Alicia Swartz, RN, PNP, PhD

Postdoctoral Fellow, 2018-2019

Dr. Alicia Swartz is a pre-tenure assistant professor of nursing, a clinical researcher in family planning, and a practicing Pediatric Nurse Practitioner in adolescent sexual and reproductive health. Her research, which is informed by the frameworks of social determinants of health and reproductive justice, is designed to be directly translated into clinical practice. She is an emerging scholar in adolescent family planning who is advancing the field of family planning research through translational research in pediatric nursing. Her current work is aimed at strengthening the nursing provision of evidence-based adolescent family planning care that is guided by a reproductive justice framework to (1) improve patient education and clinical management, (2) improve health outcomes, and (3) inform health policy.