Sociomedical Sciences

Siri Suh is a PhD student in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences (Sociology). She is a trainee in the Department’s Gender, Sexuality and Health fellowship program and has also received a predoctoral National Research Service Award from the National Institutes of Child Health and Development (NICHD). Since obtaining a Master of Public Health from Columbia University in 2004, Siri's research and work experiences have revolved primarily around reproductive and maternal health in sub-Saharan Africa. As an MPH student, she worked as a research assistant for Averting Maternal Death and Disability (AMDD). She has consulted with UNFPA’s maternal mortality reduction program on multiple occasions since receiving her MPH. Between 2004 and 2006, Siri was a University of Michigan Population Fellow with Management Sciences for Health (MSH) in Senegal, providing technical support to the supervision and evaluation of family planning, maternal health and post-abortion services in public facilities.

Siri is currently interested in unsafe abortion in Africa, a public health problem that leads to thousands of preventable deaths and injuries among women every year in this region. She wishes to explore the practices and perceptions of medical professionals regarding abortion and post-abortion care in settings where abortion is highly restricted. In particular, she is interested in investigating how medical practitioners manage tensions between various domains of expertise such as medicine, law and religion in their daily practices and discourse.

Since starting the PhD program, Siri has worked with the Guttmacher Institute on an abortion incidence survey in Burkina Faso. She has also worked with Global Doctors for Choice, a recently launched organization dedicated to training physicians around the world to advocate for safe abortion and reproductive health. During the summer of 2009, she plans on conducting preliminary dissertation research in Senegal as part of a Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship (DPDF) she received from the Social Science Research Council.