Susheela Singh joined the Guttmacher Institute in 1985 and served as Vice President for Research from 2004 to 2016. In her current role as Vice President for International Research, Dr. Singh is responsible for broad oversight of Guttmacher’s research portfolio of international projects on sexual and reproductive health. She also oversees the Institute’s relationships with in-country and global research partners. Along with Lawrence Finer, she shares responsibility for top-level oversight of strategic planning, project development and management activities in the Research division, and both serve on the Institute’s management team.
Dr. Singh’s work addresses the sexual and reproductive behaviors and goals of women and men, their need for related services and information, and gaps in meeting these needs, with a focus on developing countries. During her career as a social scientist, Dr. Singh has written and coauthored numerous journal articles, monographs and other publications. She has coedited special issues of journals, a volume on methodologies for estimating abortion incidence and a book on fertility transition in Latin America and the Caribbean. Her current research focuses on the costs and benefits of providing sexual and reproductive health services, documentation of abortion and unintended pregnancy, abortion-related morbidity, maternal health, contraceptive use and failure rates, and adolescent sexual and reproductive health. Her past research addresses a similar range of issues for the United States and other developed countries.
Dr. Singh participates in many professional organizations in the field, including the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population, the National Academy of Sciences and the World Health Organization. She earned her doctorate in sociology from the University of California at Berkeley and worked previously at the World Fertility Survey.
Read more about Dr. Singh in this May 2013 profile by The Lancet.
