CPRC

Past Research: Professor Chavkin’s work has long focused on the interplay of medical, epidemiological and policy factors affecting reproductive health, particularly for the disenfranchised. Recently, she completed a three-city study of the impact of “welfare reform” on the health of mothers and children with chronic illnesses. Funded by the Maternal Child Health Bureau, CDC and the Office of Population Affairs as well as several private foundations, this study demonstrated irreconcilable tension between the work demands of the program and the demands of caring for a chronically-ill child. In the past 36 months, with initial funding from the Fulbright New Century Scholars Program, she has investigated multi-national comparative policy responses to declines in fertility to below replacement level. Although many policy analysts and demographers have identified delayed first birth as a major contributor to the decline and have concluded that work-family reconciliation (WFR) policies are necessary to support childbearing, they have yet to concretely integrate the two, and, indeed, have supported the growing use of assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) by women who have delayed. She has also directed the Soros Reproductive Health and Rights Fellowship Program, which supported the work of international scholars and resulted in the book (which she co-edited with Ellen Chesler) entitled, Where Human Rights Begin.

Present Research: Chavkin has been further probing the public health and demographic consequences of the explosive increase in ARTs. She wrote a commissioned paper for the Institute of Medicine about the ART-associated contribution to preterm birth in the U.S. She is working with the European Society for Human Reproductive Endocrinology to develop a project addressing the lack of long term health data for both children and their mothers, particularly regarding such rapidly introduced technologies as cryopreservation of ova and embryos and pre-implantation genetic diagnosis. She has continued her comparative policy research, branching out to Latin America, Australia and Eastern Europe. She has published, lectured, directed a Faculty Seminar with Biology Professor Bob Pollack, taught an MPH-level new course on this topic and is supervising a postdoctoral anthropologist who is studying Poland, which has the lowest fertility level in Europe.

Future Research: Chavkin will continue to investigate both strands identified in her work regarding fertility decline: WFR polices and policies regarding maternal delay and ARTs. She will be identifying public health parameters and policies regarding WFR in NYC for the NYC DOHMH. The ART-related investigations will address reproductive tourism, nationalist demographic goals, cross-national monitoring and regulation. She will also be exploring the health consequences of ova donation for the donors and the contrasting policies addressing this in the ART and stem cell contexts. She plans two conferences to be funded by the Hewlett Foundation. The first will convene scholars of transnational adoption, transnational migration of nannies and reproductive tourism to consider these phenomena together in the light of fertility decline, maternal delay and female employment; the other will focus on devising strategies to promote the inclusion of reproductive health in any national plans regarding health care.

Professor Chavkin's Departmental Biography Page