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Dr. Blair Darney is an affiliate investigator at OCHIN. She is a reproductive health services researcher with deep experience and expertise in observational data methods and with diverse data sources to assess quality and evaluate programs, policies, and treatments in reproductive health. Her work contributes to improving the organization, financing, and delivery of prenatal, obstetric, contraception, miscarriage, and abortion services for underserved women and improving health outcomes.
Her areas of methodological expertise are improving causal inference in non-randomized designs, including quasi-experimental designs, developing appropriate comparison groups, triangulating data sources, and clinical and survey data. She has a robust federally funded (OPA) binational program of research focused on Mexico and Mexican origin populations in the U.S.
This body of work focuses on access and utilization of contraception and other reproductive health services in community clinics that serve low-income and underserved individuals. This work evaluates state and federal policies and programs (Medicaid expansion under the ACA and Title X), innovative service delivery models (e.g., school-based health centers), and quality of care, and focuses on key populations (e.g., adolescents, those without insurance, immigrants). This work leverages electronic health record data and population-based survey data to provide rigorous evidence that informs policy and clinical practice and supports evidence-based, person-centered care. (* indicates a mentee lead author) Blair has over a decade of experience working in Mexico and collaborating across Latin America, including 3 years as an investigator at the Instituto Nacional de Salud Publica in Mexico. This ongoing body of work leverages ongoing legal progress to expand access to abortion in Mexico and leverages quantitative and qualitative methods and deep collaborations. Her work has informed current national safe abortion guidelines and highlighted inequities in access to abortion. The team she leads is internationally recognized for their expertise on abortion in Mexico. The interdisciplinary collaborations she has developed strengthen the link between research and programs, facilitate translating evidence into practice, and leverage science in the support of human rights. (* indicates a mentee lead author) This bi-national work leverages data on both sides of the border and Blair’s deep knowledge of both the U.S. and Mexican health systems. She uses an innovative approach to comparison groups for Mexican-origin immigrant and U.S.-born women informed by recent scholarship on best practices for inclusion of race and ethnicity in quantitative studies. She leverages population-based data to answer questions about the intersection of nativity, ethnicity, insurance, and utilization of contraceptive services. Her innovative work on adolescent pregnancy critiques cultural explanations to focus on structural inequities that form part of the immigrant experience. Observational research is subject to well-known biases resulting from self-selection into treatment, unobserved confounding, and data quality issues, to name a few potential limitations. However, randomized trials are not feasible or desirable for many pressing questions about health outcomes or the effectiveness of reproductive health services. Blair’s methodological expertise, gained through leadership of diverse types of observational studies, focuses on are improving causal inference in non-randomized designs, including developing appropriate comparison groups, triangulating data sources and analytic approaches, and correlated data.
Contraceptive services in U.S. “safety net” clinics
Access to abortion in Mexico
Contraceptive use and adolescent reproductive health: U.S. and Mexico
Methodology: Quality measurement, counterfactuals, comparison groups, and innovative data
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