As Director of Domestic Research, Kathryn Kost oversaw the Guttmacher Institute’s teams conducting large-scale data collection and innovative, policy-relevant research on sexual and reproductive health in the United States. She now serves as a Senior Fellow. In her nearly four decades at the Institute, and in collaboration with pioneers in sexual and reproductive health (SRH) research, Dr. Kost contributed research and journal articles on a number of topic areas in the SRH field. Trained as a demographer, she focuses on measurement of population-level incidence of pregnancies (births, abortions and fetal loss) and differentiation of trends according to desires for pregnancy, both at the national and state levels; the association between pregnancy desires and individuals’ health and well-being; and estimation of contraceptive-method failure rates, using population data sources.
Dr. Kost also played a critical role in the Institute’s strategic planning and management of the Research division. She is also a mentor, dedicated to the well-being and professional development of all staff and the improvement of research processes. Dr. Kost received her BA in sociology from Reed College and a PhD in sociology from Princeton University, where she specialized in demography at the Office of Population Research.
