Beyond the Grant: Mapping Reproductive Healthcare Deserts Opens a Path to Discovery

In communities across the country, reproductive healthcare has quietly disappeared. Clinics have closed, providers have left, and the distance to care has grown too far for many families to cross. Dr. Christie Sennott (Sociology) with undergraduate student Annette Tan (along with other researchers) set out to build the tools to show exactly where those gaps exist and what they cost mothers and babies in terms of health.

What began as a research grant has grown into something much larger: a publicly accessible national resource, a new affiliated project of the Center for Families, and a student whose entire future was redirected by the experience.

Annette came to this project as an undergraduate with two majors and a lot of intellectual curiosity. Over the past year she took on work that would challenge a seasoned researcher. She managed extraordinarily complex federal birth records data, piecing together the connection between where families live and the maternal and infant health outcomes they experience. She also dove into historical documents to reconstruct the history of abortion access in Puerto Rico, a record that had never formally existed, laying the groundwork for fieldwork that took place over the summer.

The most visible result of this work is now live and open to the world. The Reproductive Healthcare Desert Dashboard at rhdproject.org maps exactly where access to abortion, contraception, maternity care, and fertility services has disappeared across the United States, and how far people in those areas must travel to reach care. It is a tool built for researchers, journalists, advocates, and policymakers, and it carries the Center for Families logo in recognition of the support that made it possible.

The dashboard reflects a broader collaboration, including co-investigator Dr. Sara Yeatman of the University of Colorado Denver, along with a team of consultants and research assistants across both institutions. But it was the Miles Grant that gave Dr. Sennott the ability to bring an undergraduate directly into that work.

Multiple papers are in progress, and the team has presented the research at conferences and in poster sessions throughout the year. The scholarship is coming, and when it arrives it will give healthcare systems, legal advocates, and community organizations the evidence they need to act.

But perhaps the most lasting outcome of this grant is Annette herself. Her experience on this project, the research skills she built, the faculty relationships she formed, and the sense of purpose she found in work that matters, led her to apply to doctoral programs. She was accepted to several, including Purdue University’s own Sociology PhD program, and she chose to stay. She began her doctorate this fall (2026).

For the families living in reproductive healthcare deserts across this country, the research being built by this project will help make their invisible reality visible to the people with the power to change it.

Bob L. and Joyce Beery Miles Research Enhancement Grant

Made possible by Bob and Joyce Miles, who saw firsthand how even modest support can change the trajectory of a student’s life, this grant gives faculty the resources to bring undergraduates into meaningful research experiences. After witnessing that impact, Bob and Joyce created an endowment to sustain this opportunity in perpetuity.

2025 Recipient: Christie Sennott, PhD, Sociology, supporting, Annette Tan, Undergraduate Researcher

Beyond the Grant: Stories of Research and Discovery is an ongoing series following up with recipients of Center for Families Funding Program Opportunities. Learn more about CFF Funding Opportunities.