The Wallace Center welcomes new executive director Lindsay Parham, PhD, JD
- By Diana Stasko
- 2 min. read ▪ Published
The Helen Wallace Center for Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health (MCAH) recently welcomed a new executive director, Lindsay Parham, PhD, JD.
Parham is a social scientist and lawyer specializing in women’s health policy and healthcare organizations, with over a decade working in reproductive rights, ethics, justice, and health. “As a longtime advocate for reproductive and maternal health, I am thrilled to be joining the outstanding MCAH faculty and students at the Wallace Center and Berkeley Public Health,” said Parham.
The Wallace Center was established in 2015 with an endowment from Helen Wallace, MD, MPH, according to the center’s website. Dr. Wallace served as chair of the UC Berkeley School of Public Health’s Maternal and Child Health program from 1962 to 1980. She was particularly interested in infant health, maternal mortality, health systems change, and expanding healthcare delivery and laid important groundwork in the field by fostering collaboration across disciplines at a time when it was rare to do so. She passed away in 2013 at the age of 99; the Helen Wallace Center for MCAH was established in her name
The Wallace Center advances maternal, child, and adolescent health and reduces health disparities using innovation, technology, and community engagement. Current projects include assessing telehealth and remote patient monitoring for perinatal care, community-based doula care research, and using big data to research reproductive and sexual health outcomes.
Of her goals for the center, Parham said, “With a background in sociology of medicine and law in the prenatal technology space, my goal as executive director is to highlight the innovative work our students and faculty are producing and broaden the reach of the center by strengthening our partnerships with community groups and the technology sector.”
The center trains student researchers in the intersection of MCAH and technology at the undergraduate, graduate, doctoral, and postdoctoral levels via internships, dissertation funding, postdoc fellowships, and MPH traineeship awards.
“This is a critical time to be reimagining the prenatal and postpartum experience to improve maternal and child outcomes — it’s both a vital issue with the current upheavals in reproductive law, as well as a new era of innovation in this area in the technology sector,” said Parham.
