Research Expertise and Interest
reproductive health, health disparities, birth outcomes and maternal health, community-engaged research/scholarship, community-based research partnerships, participatory research, reproductive justice research
Research Description
Anu Manchikanti Gómez is a scholar of sexual and reproductive health equity who uses participatory and engaged approaches to produce knowledge that centers the communities most affected by reproductive oppression. As an Associate Professor at the University of California, Berkeley School of Social Welfare and the director of the Sexual Health and Reproductive Equity Program, she has a long track record of conducting innovative and rigorous research that puts reproductive justice into practice and that has affected programs, policy, and practice in sexual, reproductive, and maternal health.
Her ongoing projects focus on advancing birth equity and contraceptive access. Dr. Gómez is the co-PI of the evaluation of the Abundant Birth Project (ABP), the first guaranteed income program for pregnant people in the United States. Initially a pilot program in San Francisco launched by Expecting Justice, ABP has now expanded to 5 California counties. The evaluation seeks to identify the impact of unconditional income supplementation on adverse pregnancy outcomes, maternal mental health, and infant development among Black-identified program participants. Dr. Gómez is currently leading a project focused on contraceptive misinformation—documenting its presence on TikTok, understanding how it affects young people, and developing strategies to disrupt it. Other recently completed projects include a national, stakeholder-engaged effort to advance person-centered metrics of contraceptive access; a partnered evaluation of SisterWeb’s community doula care programs; and a participatory study of facilitators and barriers of implementing pharmacist-prescribed contraception in rural California.
Dr. Gómez has authored over 80 publications. Funders of her work have included the National Institutes of Health, Arnold Ventures, the Society of Family Planning Research Fund, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Dr. Gómez’s scholarship has been recognized with national and campus awards, including the 2024 Society of Family Planning Beacon of Science Award, the 2022 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Equity Award, and the 2021 Chancellor’s Award for Research in the Public Interest.
