Laura Schummers, ScD, a reproductive and perinatal epidemiologist and post-doctoral Fellow at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia, will present the 31^st annual Labelle Lecture on Wednesday, November 9 at 3 pm.

Her lecture, entitled Improving reproductive population health through health policy and outcomes research, will be held at McMaster University’s main campus in room MDCL 3020, and simultaneously streamed online. A link will be posted here to register to participate virtually.

Dr. Schummers’ program of research uses population-based administrative health data to study impacts of health policy and practice on reproductive population health. In Canada longstanding inadequate and inequitable access to reproductive health services (including contraception and abortion) has limited the ability for females to optimally time and space pregnancies – a key indicator of reproductive population health and gender equity. Health systems are striving to fill these access gaps, leaving health policy and system leaders hungry for rigorous evaluation of how policy and practice changes are impacting reproductive health.

In this presentation, Laura will describe her research using quantitative policy analysis methods to examine impacts of Canada’s globally unique regulatory approach to the “abortion pill” on abortion use, safety, and effectiveness in Canada; and international policy implications. In this talk, Laura will consider implementation of similar methods to a range of reproductive health policy and practice questions in partnership with policymakers, health care providers, and patients.

Discussant: Tiffany Green, Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison