Joanna Mishtal, PhD

Joanna Mishtal is a Professor in the Department of Community and Population Health within the College of Health at Lehigh University. Her research interests focus on analyses of gender and health through the lens of social justice in a variety of geopolitical settings in Europe and the United States. Specifically, her studies using primary data collection with human subjects have focused on reproductive and sexual health as critical areas of health equity and health disparities, in the following domains: (1) the effects of politico-economic and demographic processes on health policies about access to family planning, including abortion, contraception, sex education, and assisted reproductive technologies care, as well as the resulting perpetuation of structural inequalities (social, economic, familial); (2) economic and religious influences on contraceptive choice and practices; (3) the quality of healthcare provision for LGBQ youth from the perspectives of patients and healthcare providers; (4) pregnancy intentions and decision-making processes with a focus on the social policy and economic factors underpinning the postponement of childbearing; (5) factors driving reproductive health travel across borders, both within a country and across borders; and (6) the implementation, scale-up, and sustainability of a new reproductive health service.

Her long-term research in Poland captured in the peer-reviewed book The Politics of Morality: The Church, the State and Reproductive Rights in Postsocialist Poland (Ohio University Press 2015) won the Adele E. Clarke Book Award in 2017 for an outstanding contribution to the scholarship on reproduction. The book explores the rise of conservativism during transition politics and its impact on reproductive and sexual health and rights and access to healthcare, as well as the growing phenomenon of declining total fertility rates. She also co-edited a peer-reviewed edited book A Fragmented Landscape Abortion Governance and Protest Logics in Europe (Berghahn Books 2016), and a 15-article special issue in Reproductive Biomedicine & Society about equitable access to assisted reproductive healthcare.

Her recent journal publications appeared in: PLoS ONE, BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Social Science & Medicine, BMJ Sexual & Reproductive Health.

Joanna's research has had health policy impact in Ireland and France. Her work has been funded by the Fulbright Fellowship, Wenner-Gren Foundation, Brocher Foundation, and most recently by the European Research Council, and the World Health Organization. She received her Ph.D. in applied medical anthropology in 2006 from the University of Colorado at Boulder. From 2006 to 2008, she held the Charlotte Ellertson Social Science Postdoctoral Fellow at Columbia University, Mailman School of Public Health, Department of Population and Family Health.

Joanna is passionate about teaching and mentoring undergraduate and graduate students, and supporting their intellectual growth as scholars and people. She is eager to bring her experience and enthusiasm to engage with Lehigh’s students at the College of Health.

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Education

• Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, Post-Doctorate in medical and public health
• University of Colorado at Boulder, Ph.D., M.A., and B.A. in applied medical anthropology

Courses