CSDE Research Areas:
- Health of People and Populations
Hilary Schwandt earned her BS in Biochemistry from California Polytechnic State University. After graduating from Calpoly she lived in Jamaica for two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer. She then earned her master’s and her doctoral degree from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Hilary’s doctoral dissertation was on unsafe abortion in Ghana and included a qualitative study on the pathways to abortion, a comparison of incomplete pregnancy patients and a randomized, noninferiority trial of group vs. individual family planning counseling. Her main area of research interest is reproductive health. Just prior to joining Fairhaven College, Hilary was working in the research division at the Center for Communication Programs in Baltimore, Maryland. At the Center for Communication Programs she was the technical monitoring and evaluation advisor for numerous projects, such as the Go Girls Initiative! – a project that aimed to reduce adolescent girls’ vulnerability to HIV/AIDS in Botswana, Malawi, and Mozambique; the Nigerian Urban Reproductive Health Initiative – a project that aimed to reduce the barriers to family planning use among the urban poor; a prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission project in Ethiopia; and a malaria prevention during pregnancy project in Zambia. Hilary grew up in Bellingham and she is delighted for the opportunity to live once again in Bellingham and work with the esteemed Fairhaven College faculty.