
Athena Tapales joined the Guttmacher Institute in 2005 as a consultant and started as a Senior Research Scientist in 2016. She received her PhD in demography from the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. She holds an MA in public policy from the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota and a BA in economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her work at the Guttmacher Institute has focused on contraceptive use and trends in unintended pregnancy among women in the United States and overseas. Dr. Tapales is currently working on a study assessing unmet need for modern contraception among women in Ghana who desire to limit their fertility. She is also beginning preliminary work on the use of reproductive health services among immigrant women in the United States.