This year’s Deborah A. Hobbins Graduate Student Award in Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice has been awarded to Lindsay Cannon. Lindsay is a PhD student in Sociology and a trainee in the Center for Demography and Ecology. She conducts mixed methods research on reproductive health and gender-based violence, applying trauma-informed, survivor-centered, and reproductive justice frameworks. Lindsay holds bachelor’s degrees in Neuroscience and Psychology from The Ohio State University and Master of Public Health and Master of Social Work degrees from the University of Michigan.
Lindsay is particularly interested how racial and socioeconomic disparities impact reproductive healthcare. Her dissertation will focus on how racial and socioeconomic (dis)advantage interacts with chronic health conditions to produce differential gaps between fertility desires and achieved fertility. Birthing persons with chronic health conditions experience high rates of pregnancy complications, including severe maternal morbidity and maternal mortality. However, birthing persons with chronic health conditions also experience tensions between what can be competing desires: to get pregnant and to remain healthy. Healthcare systems built to serve white and socioeconomically advantaged people may exacerbate the tension between achieving good health and realizing desired fertility for people of color and socioeconomically disadvantaged people with chronic health conditions. Lindsay’s work focuses on understanding how birthing persons with chronic health conditions make decisions about pregnancy in light of constrained choices, as well as which people are most able to meet their desired outcomes. Her work will inform clinical practice and policymaking in service of practices, protocols, and policies that center reproductive justice, patient-centered care, and reproductive autonomy for patients with chronic health conditions.