Dr. Mikaela Smith is a research scientist with the Ohio Policy Evaluation Network (OPEN) and Division of Epidemiology, Ohio State College of Public Health. Smith received her BA in mathematics from Mount Holyoke College and her PhD and MA in sociology from the University of California, Irvine, where she conducted comparative research of public investments in reproductive healthcare in the United States.
Dr. Smith shared her answers with the Institute for Population Research (IPR) to the following questions about her career, research interests, and the impact of her work.
Q. How long have you been at Ohio State, and how long have you been connected to IPR?
I joined Ohio State as a post-doc in 2019 and have been affiliated with IPR since then.
Q. Describe your main research interests in a few sentences.
Broadly, my research identifies policy-relevant inequities in abortion and contraception use in Ohio and nearby states. I co-lead two projects within OPEN: the Patterns in Abortion Use project, which uses chart review, clinic surveys, and publicly available data to assess the impact of abortion laws on access to care in Ohio; and the Surveys of Women project, which is a longitudinal and cross-sectional survey that captures contraceptive and reproductive behaviors and attitudes among women in nine states, including Ohio. Specific areas of interest include travel for abortion care, contraceptive preferences, innovations in quantitative methods, and public opinion on abortion.
Q. Which of your current projects are you most excited about?
I’m excited about a project from the Surveys of Women dataset that uses a new method, multilevel analysis of individual heterogeneity and discriminatory accuracy (MAIHDA), to assess discrepancies in contraceptive method preference and use. MAIHDA relies on multi-level modeling strategies to nest individuals within social strata, to better capture the intersectional nature of barriers to care. It was developed to capture inequities in access to other forms of healthcare but has not yet been extensively applied to areas of reproductive healthcare. Our early findings suggest that the intersectional social strata variable explains much of the variation in who is using their preferred contraceptive method.
Q. What drew you to IPR, and how do you benefit from your involvement with IPR?
I joined IPR when I started at Ohio State in 2019. My PhD is in sociology, but my appointment with Ohio State is in the college of public health, so my faculty mentors suggested I join IPR to stay connected with other sociologists. The activity I participate in/benefit from the most is definitely the weekly seminar series. It’s a great way to stay up to date with new research and methods. I’ve also attended several of the R workshops, which are very approachable for someone who was trained in Stata.
Q. What has been the biggest impact of your work, or what do you hope for future impacts for your work?
One of the impacts of my research that I am most proud of is that I was able to use my research when co-authoring an amicus brief submitted to the Ohio State Supreme Court in September 2022. The case, Preterm v. Yost, was about the state’s ban on abortions after about 6 weeks’ gestation. The 6-week ban went into place in Ohio after the US Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022. In our brief, we described findings from the Ohio Survey of Women study, which showed that women in Ohio are broadly supportive of abortion. We made the case that a ban on abortion after 6 weeks’ gestation stands against the views of Ohio constituents. The ban was ultimately blocked by the courts and remains blocked due to the passage of the Reproductive Freedom Amendment ballot initiative in November 2023. It was very satisfying to see the direct way that research can be used to inform political and legal decisions! I also was appreciative of my network of colleagues (many of whom are also IPR affiliates), without whom I would not have been aware of the opportunity to contribute to the brief.
Q. How did you come to this career and to your research area?
My undergraduate degree was in math and my PhD was in sociology. I didn’t start either of my degrees intending to end up in public health, but I appreciate that this field lets me combine the mathematical methods with the sociological understanding of health inequities. I began studying reproductive healthcare, specifically family planning and abortion, during my graduate training. I was interested in the sociology of gender and was in school at a time when access to reproductive healthcare was starting to become more and more limited, especially in certain states. This led me to the broad question of, why are reproductive healthcare services accessible to some and not others? This question then led me to intersectionality theory and reproductive justice, which have been grounding frameworks for my research since. After my post-doc I decided to stay on with OPEN and Ohio State as a research scientist, so that I could continue focusing the majority of my time on research, while still being able to mentor students who come through our program as GRAs or volunteers.
Q. What motivates you to do what you do?
I am motivated by staff at the clinics and abortion funds who participate in our research and the work they do daily to help patients actualize their reproductive goals. I am also motivated by the patients who sometimes have to jump through so many hoops in order to get the care they need.
Q. Do you do any public-facing communication or dissemination of your work? How did you get started with this form of engagement? What have your experiences been? Why do you think it’s important for you?
I did my first public-facing media in 2022, right before the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and made abortion less accessible in many parts of the country. I had been working on research in this area for years and just happened to have a manuscript come out right around the time that the Dobbs leak suggested Roe would be overturned. A colleague and co-author of mine also had a related paper published, and so the two together ended up getting picked up by several media outlets.
It was very scary to engage with the media the first time I did it (and it still feels nerve-wracking sometimes now!), but it felt important to get our research out to a larger audience. It was also one of the reasons that I joined OPEN, since we have a full-time dedicated communications staff member, so it seemed reasonable to take advantage of the opportunity to speak with the media. I did a lot of preparation with her – making message triangles, practicing answering questions – which definitely helped in both my messaging and to calm my nerves. I think being connected with communications folks, either in the college, the university, or connecting directly to journalists, is an important part of getting your research out. You never know when there will be broader appetite for your work, but by having those relationships in place, you can already be on someone’s radar when it becomes opportune to share your work more broadly.
Q. Have you done any community-engaged or participatory work? What was this experience like, and how did it shape your research goals or practices?
I have done a small amount of community-engaged research. One was during my post-doc, where I joined after most of the engagement with community members had ended. Another was a project I lead in collaboration with a non-profit group, New Voices for Reproductive Justice, for which we received some funds from the National Institute for Reproductive Health. I continue to value community-engaged work, and through these experiences I’ve also come to understand how much effort goes into research that is done for/by/with community members who are outside the academy. I would say that having expectations on roles and responsibilities at the outset of a project helps in managing relationships as the project progresses. Establishing rapport is also an important part (and takes a lot of time and effort), if you as the researcher are not already a member of the community (or community group) with whom you are working. Overall community-engaged work can be very difficult, but also very rewarding when it comes together well.