Adaobi Anakwe is a second-year doctoral student at Saint Louis University, St. Louis, Missouri where she is pursuing a degree in Epidemiology with a focus on maternal, child and family health under the supervision of Dr. Pamela Xaverius. Prior to joining the College for Public Health and Social Justice at SLU, she graduated with a master’s degree in public health from the University of Missouri – Columbia. At both institutions she has been involved in research on maternal and child health with an emphasis on preconception health, youth engagement, risky health behaviors, health promotion and family and community health. Her research, alongside mentors, involves work in rural Missouri, rural South Africa and the city of St. Louis, and utilizes both quantitative and qualitative methodologies in analyze secondary and primary data. She has co-authored several manuscripts.
Her current research interest applies a social determinants of health lens to examine and contextualize preconception health risks as they relate to men’s fertility planning with the principal goal of improving the health of men and their families. Her proposed research will use both secondary data from the National Survey of Family Growth and primary data from focus group interviews to examine the association between men’s preconception health status and their fertility intentions and explore how men’s perceptions of these factors relate to their attitudes and behaviors towards contraception. The primary objective is to create a more nuanced understanding of how these factors influence fertility planning behaviors in this population