The Group on Reproductive Health and Rights

Background:
Since 2002, The Group on Reproductive Health and Rights (GRHR) at the Harvard Center of Development and Population Studies has brought together academics and activists from the Boston area working in the fields of reproductive health and rights. Formed out of a shared concern about decreasing attention to reproductive health in the international health and development agenda, GRHR has engaged with a wide range of issues reflecting changes to the field of reproductive health and rights in the past decade. The current Faculty Chair is Sofia Gruskin, Director of the Program on International Health and Human Rights and Associate Professor in the Department of Global Health and Population at the Harvard School of Public Health. Through seminars, discussions and the facilitation of independent research, the group acts as a focal point for the issues of reproduction, gender, sexuality, human rights, and health at Harvard.

Past Accomplishments:
Highlighting work in the area of reproductive health and rights, GRHR has instituted an annual lecture series at the Center that brings scholars and activists to Cambridge. Former chairs Mindy Roseman and Laura Reichenbach, along with group member Rebecca Firestone, received support from the MacArthur Foundation to produce an edited collection of critical essays by leading scholars and practitioners in the field of global reproductive health and rights, Global Reproductive Health and Rights: the Way Forward. Authors invited to contribute to this collection represent the diversity encapsulated in GRHR and in the field of reproductive health itself, including human rights lawyers, economists, demographers, and advocates.

Future Directions:
GRHR meets monthly and hosts both global and local leaders in the field of reproductive health and rights. In the upcoming year, we will be holding forums to discuss a range of issues including in particular optimal responses to the pregnancy intentions of HIV positive women. GRHR has recognized an urgent need to determine existing gaps in research and to develop a multidisciplinary research agenda, spanning the biomedical and social sciences, to create a more complete understanding of how women's reproductive intentions can safely be fulfilled. GRHR will be receiving funding from the National Institutes of Health to support a conference : "Pregnancy Intentions of HIV-Infected Women: Forwarding the Research Agenda" to be held in the Fall of 2009.

For more information please contact the group coordinator, Sarah MacCarthy, at smaccarthy@hsph.harvard.edu