This talk will be in-person and online.

In this talk, Dr. Maria Rodriguez will describe the effect that restricting access to care during pregnancy by citizenship status has on immigrant maternal and newborn health. She will identify the role that Oregon’s progressive policies have played in mitigating maternal health disparities among immigrant families.

Maria I. Rodriguez, M.D., M.P.H. is a Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the Medical Director for Oregon's Reproductive Health Program. She is Deputy Editor of the Cochrane Fertility Regulation Group, newly housed at OHSU. She completed medical school and residency at OHSU (2004, 2008), and a fellowship in family planning at UCSF (2010). As part of her fellowship, she completed a Master’s in Public Health at UC Berkeley (2010). Following her fellowship, she spent five years working for the Department of Reproductive Health and Research at the World Health Organization is in Geneva, Switzerland. She serves as chair of Oregon’s Maternal Mortality Review Committee and as co-chair on the Medicaid Advisory Committee.

Dr. Rodriguez’s research focuses on the intersection of medicine, policy and economics. She is specifically interested in generating information to help guide evidence based reproductive health policy both domestically and internationally. She has expertise in cost effectiveness, health systems and policy research, systematic reviews and GRADE methodologies. Her research has been nationally recognized with the Guttmacher Institute’s Darroch Award for Excellence in Sexual and Reproductive Health Research and the Society of Family Planning’s Beacon of Science Award in 2019.

Her current research includes a study called The Reproductive Health Equity Project: Determining how Medicaid Policy Drives Contraceptive Access & Choice. This study examines how Medicaid policy - at the local, state, and national levels - influences initiation and use of effective contraception.