Ashlee Van Schyndel, MPH

Ashlee worked as a Legislative Fellow for Planned Parenthood of Kentucky for a year and a half, where she helped research and advocate for Title X funding in Kentucky, abortion rights, contraception, and sexual violence. During this time, Ashlee also served as a member of the National Storytellers of Planned Parenthood in the 2020 cohort. She has served as an Americorps VISTA for a local nonprofit and helped on a mixed-methods intervention to improve hope and belonging in historically marginalized young people.

Recently, she has finished work on a project led by Dr. Arden Handler on evaluating the Chicago Collaborative for Maternal Health and two projects of her own on paid leave as a predictor for postpartum care utilization and a multilevel analysis on variations in dental coverage benefits among pregnant people.

Her areas of interest within MCH include health policy, survey methodology, work-family policies, workplace leave policies, pregnancy loss, and pregnancy discrimination. Upon graduation, Ashlee would like to work for a policy research think tank or social research organization. She is also open to working in academia.

Fun Fact- Ashlee is a former primatologist and studied rhesus macaques, howler monkeys, and several species of lemurs.

1. Van Schyndel, A. (2023). “Paid leave as a predictor for postpartum care utilization.” Poster presentation for AcademyHealth Annual Research Meeting, Seattle, WA, Accepted.
2. Van Schyndel, A. (2020). “Impact of health insurance status on HPV vaccination uptake in adolescents.” Poster presentation at the American Public Health Association Annual Meeting, virtually due to COVID-19.
3. Salunkhe, S., Ford, N., Van Schyndel, A., Brown, A., Edmonds, T. (2020). “Culturally-responsive interventions for youth well-being: A mixed-method approach.” Poster presentation at the American Public Health Association Annual Meeting, virtually due to COVID-19.