Speaker Profile
Abigail R. A. Aiken

Abigail R. A. Aiken MD, MPH, PhD

Obstetrics and Gynecology
Austin, Texas, United States of America

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Abigail Aiken is an Assistant Professor of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin LBJ School. She received her medical doctorate from the University of Cambridge, her master’s in public health from Harvard University, and her doctorate in public policy from the University of Texas at Austin. She also worked as a postdoctoral research associate at the Office of Population Research and a lecturer in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs at Princeton University. She has been with the Texas Policy Evaluation Project since its inception and is currently involved in the Postpartum Contraception Study, the Family Planning Clinic Survey, and the Post-Abortion Contraception Study. Her current research focuses on the measurement and meaning of unintended pregnancy. She examines complexity in women’s and men’s pregnancy intentions and desires, how these desires relate to contraceptive preferences and use, and the relationship between the social, economic, and emotional impacts of unintended pregnancy and health outcomes for women, men, and children. She is also involved in work examining voting behavior on reproductive health issues in the US, the availability of postpartum contraception in the US and UK, and the use of instrumental delivery versus cesarean section for persistent malposition in labor. She has worked on projects investigating pregnancy intentions and contraceptive use at the U.S.-Mexico border and the cumulative impact of multiple pregnancies on later-life health.
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