Symposium Speakers
Katie Watson, JD is Associate Professor of Medical Education and Obstetrics & Gynecology at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, where she is an award-winning teacher of bioethics, law, and medical humanities to medical students and graduate students, and a member of the Northwestern Memorial Hospital Ethics Committee. Professor Watson graduated from New York University School of Law, clerked in the federal judiciary, and practiced public interest law before completing Fellowships in Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago Medical School’s MacLean Center, and in Medical Humanities at Northwestern. In her role as an ethics professor, Professor Watson has been elected a Board member of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, Chair of the Ethics Committee and Board member of the National Abortion Federation, and Bioethics Advisor to and Member of the National Medical Council of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. In 2017 Watson reduced her time at Northwestern, and took on a new role at the ACLU of Illinois as Senior Counsel for the Women’s and Reproductive Rights Project. Her book “Scarlet A: The Ethics, Law, and Politics of Ordinary Abortion” will be published by Oxford University Press in 2017.
Kari White is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Care Organization and Policy at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology with a specialization in Demography from the University of Texas at Austin, an MPH from Tulane University and MA in Latin American Studies from the University of Arizona. Her research focuses on the impact of health service delivery models and policies on access to and use of reproductive health services. She is has a career development (K01) award from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development on factors influencing vasectomy use. She is also the Principal Investigator on a Packard Foundation-funded study examining post-abortion contraception in Mississippi, and is a Co-Investigator on the Texas Policy Evaluation Project.
Marina Baginsky Lowe joined the ACLU of Utah in 2007 as Staff Attorney. In 2010, she transitioned into the role of the ACLU of Utah's full-time Legislative & Policy Counsel. She represents the ACLU of Utah at the State Capitol from January through March, and throughout the rest of the year, cultivates relationships with elected officials - from U.S. Congressmen and Senators to local city councilpeople - across the state to further the protection of civil liberties in Utah. Before joining the ACLU of Utah, Marina worked with the Salt Lake Legal Defenders Association, in the Appellate Division. In this capacity she worked on numerous appeals for indigent clients, in defense of their constitutional rights including drafting appellate briefs on issues ranging from the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, to the constitutionality of Utah legislation pertaining to child endangerment. Prior to that, Marina was an associate at the international law firm of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, LLP in San Francisco, concentrating on commercial litigation, as well as intellectual property counseling and litigation. Marina grew up in Northern California and before graduating from the University of California Hastings College of the Law, spent two years working in marketing at Hewlett-Packard in Grenoble, France.
Dr. Schwarz is a health services researcher who has published 125 peer-reviewed manuscripts focused on the intersections between clinical epidemiology, health policy and the use of information technology to improve women's health. Her research related to preconception, contraceptive, and postpartum care, has been funded by the NICHD, AHRQ, the Office of Population Affairs, the Office of Adolescent Health, and a number of private foundations. From 2014 to 2016, she served as Medical Consultant to California's Office of Family Planning. Dr. Schwarz currently serves on the editorial boards of the "Journal of General Internal Medicine," "Contraception," and "NEJM-Journal Watch Women's Health." She is a Fellow of the Society of Family Planning, and past-chair of the Society of General Internal Medicine's Taskforce on Women's Health. She has previously served as Senior Medical Expert in Reproductive Health for the US Department of Veterans Affairs and as a member of the FDA's Advisory Committee on Reproductive Health Drugs.
Sarah S. Brown
Former Chief Executive Officer, for The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy
Sarah Brown was until June 2015 the CEO of The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, a private and independent non-profit organization working to promote values, behavior, and policies that reduce both teen pregnancy and unplanned pregnancy, especially among single, young adults. Under her leadership, The National Campaign played a major role in the nation's 60 percent decline in teen births since 1991, and the group has been widely recognized with many awards (over 100 as of Dec 2016) including, most recently, being named as one of ten semi-finalists in the annual Peter F. Drucker award for non-profit innovation. Under Brown's leadership, over $75 million was raised to support the organization from a wide variety of sources including private foundations, public sources of support (both state and federal) and individual gifts.
Before helping to establish the Campaign in 1996, Brown was a senior study director at the Institute of Medicine (a component of the National Academy of Sciences), where she directed numerous studies in the broad field of maternal and child health. Her last major report there resulted in the landmark book, The Best Intentions: Unintended Pregnancy and the Well-being of Children and Families. She has served on advisory boards of many influential national organizations including the Guttmacher Institute, the Population Advisory Board of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Harvard University Working Group on Early Life and Adolescent Health Policy, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the D.C. Mayor’s Committee on Reducing Teenage Pregnancies and Out-of Wedlock Births. She appeared often in print, broadcast, and online media.
Brown has received numerous awards, including named lectureships at Harvard, Stanford, Georgetown and other universities; the Institute of Medicine’s Cecil Award for Excellence in Research; the Martha May Elliot Award of the American Public Health Association; the John MacQueen Award for Excellence in Maternal and Child Health from the Association of Maternal and Child Health Program; and the Harriet Hylton Barr Distinguished Service Award from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. At the time of her retirement, the Board of The National Campaign established an honorary fund in her name to recognize future innovation in the broad field of pregnancy planning and prevention. She also serves on a number of non-profit boards that focus on women’s heath and several other issues as well.
Brown holds an undergraduate degree from Stanford University (in history, cum laude) and a Masters of Science in Public Health degree from the University of North Carolina (in epidemiology and biostatistics, cum laude). She lives in Washington and in New Hampshire with her husband, Winthrop Brown. They have three grown daughters and five grandchildren.
Diana Greene Foster is a Professor at the University of California, San Francisco and Director of Research at the UCSF ANSIRH Program. She is a demographer who uses quantitative models and analyses to evaluate the effectiveness of family planning policies and the effect of unintended pregnancy on women's lives. She is currently leading the Turnaway Study, a nationwide longitudinal prospective study of the health and well-being of women who seek abortion including both women who do and do not receive the abortion. She also directs the Global Turnaway Studies which examine the experiences of women denied abortion care in Bangladesh, Colombia, Nepal, South Africa and Tunisia. Dr. Foster received PhD in Demography and Public Policy from Princeton University.
Mark J. Hathaway, MD, MPH, is a board certified OB/GYN and served on the teaching faculty at Medstar Washington Hospital Center from 1997-2013. There he developed and led the Section of Community Outreach, the Family Planning Section, the Ryan Residency Program, and the Family Planning Fellowship. He currently is a Senior Technical Advisor for Reproductive Health at Jhpiego, an international NGO, which focuses on international maternal child health, and assists with the Family Planning Programs at Unity Health Care in Washington, DC.
Dr. Hathaway has served on several national-level work groups and committees, including the Institute of Medicine Standing Committee on Family Planning and the Title X Expert Panel. He holds appointments at George Washington University (GWU). He served on the Board of Directors of the National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association (NFPRHA) and currently on the board of the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals (ARHP).
Dr. Hathaway received his undergraduate degree in biology from the College of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN and then served in the Peace Corps as an Agricultural Extensionist Volunteer and Program Coordinator in Paraguay, South America for close to 4 years. After receiving his medical degree from the University of Kentucky, he completed an OB/GYN residency at the Washington Hospital Center in 1997. He earned a Master of Public Health degree from the Johns Hopkins University in 2006. He has been named one of the “Best Doctors in America,”and in September 2013 he left his full time faculty position to concentrate on international and national advocacy and trainings. In May-June of 2014 he volunteered with Doctors without Borders in Aweil, South Sudan directing and teaching in a large maternity ward. Dr. Hathaway teaches, lectures and advocates for family planning and maternal child health care access issues nationally and internationally on a frequent basis.
Jenny Higgins is an associate professor of Gender and Women's Studies and OB GYN at the University of Wisconsin, where she teaches one of the largest women's health classes in the country. She researchers the behavioral aspects of contraception, including how contraception affects women's sexuality. She loves collaborating with the wonderful folks at the University of Utah's Family Planning group.
Adam Sonfield joined the Guttmacher Institute’s Washington, DC office in 1997 and currently serves as a Senior Policy Manager. He is the executive editor and a regular contributor to the Institute’s public policy journal, the Guttmacher Policy Review. Mr. Sonfield’s portfolio includes research and policy analysis on public and private financing of reproductive health care in the United States, the rights and responsibilities of health care providers and patients, and men’s sexual and reproductive health. His recent focus has been the enactment and implementation of the Affordable Care Act and its potential impact on family planning coverage, services, programs and providers. He also writes a quarterly Washington Watch column for Contraceptive Technology Update. Mr. Sonfield earned an A.B. with honors in social studies from Harvard University and a Master of Public Policy, focusing in health policy, at Georgetown University.
Jen is the Vice-President of Education and Training at Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts. In this role she oversees the delivery of high-quality, comprehensive sex education to 9,000 parents, youth, and professionals across Massachusetts annually, as well as the Internal Training program for the affiliate. During her time at PPLM, the department authored a middle and high school curriculum, Get Real: Sex Education That Works, which is now on the US Health and Human Services list of evidence-based sex education programs and in use in over 25 states. Get Real is the first evidence-based program to incorporate a social-emotional-learning approach to sex education.
Jen’s work with adolescents includes; sexual health education, support for pregnant and parenting teens, substance use and violence prevention in schools, support for LGBTQ youth, peer education, and management of multiple afterschool programs, including support groups for young girls. Jen is an experienced professional trainer on topics of sexual health and management. Jen received her Masters of Social Work degree from Boston University in 2005.