FemTech and U.S. Policy: Dr. Chelsea Polis and Candace Gibson

Join us on May 29 at noon (PT) for a conversation with Dr. Chelsea Polis, Principal Research Scientist at the Guttmacher Institute, and  Candace Gibson, Director of State Policy at the Guttmacher Institute. They’ll discuss the intersections between FemTech, such as fertility tracking, reproductive justice, and public policy. 

Click here to register for this virtual presentation. 

Dr. Chelsea Polis is a reproductive health epidemiologist in New York City who works to improve global sexual and reproductive health, including on issues related to contraception, abortion, “FemTech”, infertility, and sexually transmitted infections including HIV. She currently serves as Principal Research Scientist at the Guttmacher Institute. Since 2011, she has held an Associate appointment in the Department of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Previously, she served as Senior Scientist for Epidemiology at the Population Council’s Center for Biomedical Research and Senior Epidemiological Advisor to the Office of Population and Reproductive Health at USAID. In 2023, she received a John Maddox Prize from Sense about Science and Nature for protecting science and public health by challenging misleading claims by a fertility thermometer manufacturer. Dr. Polis holds a PhD in reproductive health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a BA in medical anthropology from Brown University.

Candace Gibson (she/her) is the Director of State Policy at the Guttmacher Institute, which she joined in 2024. She oversees the Institute’s work to advance evidence-based state-level policies to secure sexual and reproductive health and rights. Previously, Ms. Gibson served as the Director of Government Relations at the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice, where she oversaw the organization’s federal policy and advocacy efforts. As a staff attorney at the National Health Law Program, she created strategies to improve access to and coverage of sexual and reproductive health care for individuals enrolled in Medicaid and in private insurance. Prior to attending law school, Ms. Gibson worked with refugee and immigrant communities to eliminate health inequities at Comunidades Unidas, in Salt Lake City, UT. She has a JD from the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law and received a BA in government and Spanish from Smith College. She was an If/When/How Reproductive Justice Fellow from 2012 to 2014 and was a New Leaders Council Maryland Fellow in 2020. Read her most recent paper here.