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Laurie Schwab Zabin Honored with Scholarship Fund

Celebrating a distinguished career with colleagues and friends is often reserved for retirement, but not in the case of Laurie Schwab Zabin, PhD ’80, professor of Population and Family Health Sciences. She’s not retiring. When the School held a symposium and gala reception in her honor last December, it was to announce the establishment of the new Laurie Schwab Zabin Scholarship Fund in Family Planning and Reproductive Health. The Fund commemorates Dr. Zabin’s tenure as the founding director of the Bill and Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health and will support graduate students at the School who are focusing their studies on improving family planning and reproductive health around the world.

The symposium, "Building International Partnerships: A Panel Discussion," celebrated the work of the Gates Institute by bringing together many experts from the family planning and reproductive health fields. The speakers included Sara Seims, PhD, president and CEO of the Alan Guttmacher Institute, Daniel E. Pellegrom, MDiv, president of Pathfinder International, and Nancy Murray, PhD ’01, senior research scientist with The Futures Group International. They discussed aspects of building cooperative programs between nations and organizations, as well as many of their personal experiences with Dr. Zabin.

Miguel Garcés, MD, MPH, dean of Health Sciences at the Universidad Rafael Landivar, traveled from Guatemala to speak at the event. The key to effective partnerships, he said, is nurturing professionals to work in their own countries and to help developing nations strengthen the effectiveness of their existing policies and programs.

At the gala following the symposium, Alfred Sommer, MD, MHS ’73, dean of the School, described Dr. Zabin as a driving force in the field of reproductive health and family planning because of her ability to build partnerships. Dr. Zabin was instrumental in the establishment of the Bill and Melinda Gates Institute at the School.

Dr. Zabin began her work in family planning in the early 1950s as a volunteer for Planned Parenthood in Baltimore. She later joined the organization’s staff and national board, and then in the mid-1970s she came to the School to earn her PhD from what was then the Department of Population Dynamics. With her PhD in English, Dr. Zabin pointed out that she was not the typical public health student. She thanked Henry Mosley, MD, MPH ’65, professor of Population and Family Health Sciences and former chair of Population Dynamics, for letting her into the program and for working closely with her in the establishment of the Gates Institute.

Dr. Zabin’s work in reproductive health has shown that adolescents are at greatest risk of unintended conception in their first months of sexual exposure. She has sought to develop experimental interventions based on her recent findings that approximately one out of four adolescents who conceive at 17 and younger has already had a clinic-based negative pregnancy test. She is also working on a new National Institutes of Health grant to identify characteristics that protect high-risk youth from early parenthood.

Dr. Zabin has served on committees and working groups for the American Public Health Association, the National Academy of Sciences, the Surgeon General, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and other organizations. She co-wrote Adolescent Pregnancy in an Urban Environment, a book describing Hopkins programs for adolescents, and wrote the book Adolescent Sexual Behavior and Childbearing. Dr. Zabin has received many awards, including the Margaret Sanger Award from Planned Parenthood, the Irwin M. Cushner Award from the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland Griswold Award.

Looking back on her career, Dr. Zabin summed it up saying, “To quote Thomas Jefferson, ‘I’m a great believer in luck, and the harder I work the more I have of it.’ ” Today, she feels luck played the greatest role her career. At the gala, she thanked Carl Taylor, MD, MPH, DrPH, professor of International Health, for having sparked her interest in public health. “Meeting Carl Taylor one evening changed my life and convinced me to go back to school,” Dr. Zabin told the audience.

Dr. Zabin will continue working on her research, acting as consultant to numerous Gates projects and as an advocate for turning research into polices that help people around the world.