Primary Research Area Panel

Co-Sponsor(s):

Population Health Initiative

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Monica McLemore, PhD, MPH, RN

Dr. Monica R. McLemore is a tenured professor in the Child, Family, and Population Health Department and the Interim Director for the Center for Anti-Racism in Nursing at the University of Washington School of Nursing. Prior to her arrival at UW, she was a tenured associate professor at the University of California, San Francisco and was named the Thelma Shobe Endowed Chair in 2021. She retired from clinical practice as a public health and staff nurse after a 28-year clinical nursing career in 2019, however, continues to provide flu and COVID-19 vaccines.

Her program of research is focused on understanding reproductive health and justice. To date, she has 96 peer reviewed articles, OpEds and commentaries and her research has been cited in the Huffington Post, Lavender Health, five amicus briefs to the Supreme Court of the United States, and three National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine reports, and a data visualization project entitled How To Fix Maternal Mortality: The first step is to stop blaming women that was published in the 2019 Future of Medicine edition of Scientific American.

Her work has also appeared in publications such as Dame Magazine, Politico, ProPublica/NPR and she made a voice appearance in Terrance Nance’s HBO series Random Acts of Flyness. She is the recipient of numerous awards and was past-chair for Sexual and Reproductive Health section of the American Public Health Association. She was inducted as a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing in 2019 and resigned in 2022 due to inaction specific to the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe vs. Wade. She became the Editor in Chief of Health Equity Journal in 2022.

Meghan Eagen-Torkko, PhD, CNM, ARNP

Meghan Eagen-Torkko, PhD, CNM, ARNP, FACNM, is Associate Professor and Director of Nursing at the University of Washington Bothell. Her scholarship examines the relationships between power and outcomes in sexual and reproductive health (SRH), with a particular focus on racism, homo/transphobia, and ableism in contraception and abortion. She maintains a clinical practice in the Family Planning Program of Seattle/King County Public Health, and holds a number of leadership positions in midwifery and nursing, including on the Board of Directors of Nurses for Sexual and Reproductive Health, the Advisory Council to Clinicians in Abortion Care/National Abortion Federation, and the Ethics Committee and Gender Equity Task Force of the American College of Nurse-Midwives.

Taylor Riley, MPH (she/her)

Taylor Riley is a doctoral candidate in epidemiology and a CSDE trainee. Her research focuses on social and structural determinants of sexual and reproductive health inequities, with a specific focus on abortion and perinatal care and outcomes. Prior to her doctoral training, Taylor was a Senior Research Associate at the Guttmacher Institute conducting research on unintended pregnancy, abortion, and contraception.

Moderator: Anjum Hajat, PhD, MPH

Dr. Hajat received her undergraduate degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, her MPH in Epidemiology and International Health from the University of Michigan, and her PhD in Epidemiology from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.