Congratuations Mieke Eeckhaut on receiving the Chancellor’s Award for Postdoctoral Research!

Mieke Eeckhaut, CCPR postdoctoral fellow, received yesterday the Chancellor’s Award for Postdoctoral Research.  The award recognizes outstanding research.  Mieke holds an individual postdoctoral fellowship from NIH through the F32 program.  Her research investigates economic disparities in the use of long-acting contraceptive methods in the United States and abroad.  Her work sheds new light on important questions of inequality in contraceptive access, cost, and attitudes about acceptability by comparing U.S. patterns to those in Europe and Australia.

In her collaboration with CCPR affiliates Megan Sweeney (Mieke’s F32 sponsor) and Jessica Gipson (co-sponsor),  Mieke documents an exceptionally high level of contraceptive sterilization among U.S. women – particularly those who are economically disadvantaged. At the same time, her work demonstrates that vasectomy (sterilization of male partners) is associated with economic advantage in the United States. This is an apparent case of American exceptionalism, however, as no other country they study displays a similar class pattern in vasectomy.   U.S. class patterns are not easily explained by differences across social class groups in the timing of childbearing or the likelihood of experiencing a stable marriage. Mieke is turning her attention now to variability in the policy contexts of contraceptive choice both between and within countries.

Congratulation’s Mieke on this well-deserved award!