Maura Dugan serves as a Senior Research Associate at AcademyHealth, where she supports various health equity centered programs. Her work encompasses a range of topics, including reproductive health equity and community-centered research and grantmaking processes. She supports programmatic and grantmaking activities for Research in Transforming Health and Health Care Systems, Community Research for Health Equity and Health Data for Action supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. These research portfolios aim to generate evidence to make the U.S. healthcare system more equitable and responsive to people’s goals and needs. Maura also supports various network projects including Project DREAM (Doula Research for Equitable Advancements in Medicaid Pregnancy Health) which aims to advance racial equity in severe maternal morbidity by identifying the most effective ways that state Medicaid programs can implement doula care to improve postpartum health among Black people and people of color.
Prior to joining AcademyHealth, Maura worked as a Research Assistant at The University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health where she investigated racial disparities in pregnancy and postpartum health outcomes, including postpartum weight retention, cardiometabolic risk, and the interplay of contextual, environmental, behavioral and psychosocial factors. Maura graduated from Muhlenberg College with a B.S. in Neuroscience and Public Health and received her M.P.H. at George Washington University.