NEWS

Danielle Atkins

Robert C. Anderson Memorial Award 2015

Danielle Atkins, a recent doctoral graduate in public administration and policy, has already made numerous substantial contributions to her field. She has worked for several years to understand how policies related to women’s reproductive health influence their decision-making and health outcomes. Her research focuses on federal and state-level policy changes that make emergency contraception available without prescription and how these shifts have affected contraceptive behaviors of women. Atkins also studies how school-level policies, such as on-site day care for the children of students, affect teenage sexual behavior and pregnancy risk. Her main focus in this research was to understand whether policies like school-based day care, which is aimed at minimizing costs to students who have already become pregnant, have effects on students who are not yet pregnant in terms of their risk-taking behavior. Atkins is currently an assistant professor of political science at the University of Tennessee.