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Sandra Garcia is a program associate II and has overseen the Population Council’s Reproductive Health program in the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region since July 2002. She is responsible for developing, fundraising, coordinating, and supervising ongoing and new research studies and projects in four priority areas: family planning and contraception; unsafe and legal abortion; sexually transmitted infections (STIs); and maternal health. She served as a regional program associate in the Council’s LAC office from 1999 to 2002.
While at the Council, her research portfolio has included knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) studies and programmatic activities related to emergency contraception in Barbados, Honduras, Jamaica, and Mexico; national surveys of Mexican and Brazilian physicians’ opinions on abortion; a national survey of Mexican Catholics and their reproductive health practices and opinions; several studies related to over-the-counter provision of oral contraceptives in Mexico; and sociobehavioral and clinical studies on STIs. Garcia is currently the principal investigator of a study based in four Bolivian provinces that is evaluating the feasibility and acceptability of introducing a rapid strip test for the diagnosis of syphilis among rural and urban women seeking prenatal care. Prior to joining the Population Council, she was a tracking coordinator for the Cancer Consortium of El Paso and a field coordinator for the Paso del Norte Area Health Education Center.
Garcia received her master's and doctor of science degrees in population and international health from the Harvard School of Public Health. She is a 1990 graduate of Harvard University.
A partial list of her publications includes:
Garcia, Sandra G., Davida Becker, P. Martinez, and F. Paz. In press. Knowledge and opinions of emergency contraceptive pills among female factory workers in Tijuana, Mexico: Insights from a worksite intervention, Journal of Border Health.
Garcia, Sandra G., Carrie Tatum, Davida Becker, K. Swanson, K. Lockwood, and Charlotte Ellertson. In press. "Is Mexico at a crossroad? Findings from a national public opinion survey on abortion, Reproductive Health Matters.
Becker, Davida, Sandra G. Garcia, and Charlotte Ellertson. 2004. Do Mexico City pharmacy workers screen women for health risks when they sell oral contraceptive pills over-the-counter? Contraception 69(4): 295 299.
Garcia, Sandra G., Diana Lara, and Lisa Goldman. 2003. Conocimientos, actitudes y prácticas de los médicos mexicanos sobre el aborto: Resultados de una encuesta nacional, Gaceta Medica de México 139(1): 91 102.
Garcia, Sandra G., Rachel Snow, and Iain Aitken. 1997. Preferences for contraceptive attributes: Voices of poor women in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, International Family Planning Perspectives 23(2): 52 58.
Current projects:
Improving the Reproductive Health of Young People in Mexico
Oral Contraceptive Use on the US Mexico Border
Using a Non-pneumatic Anti-shock Garment (NASG) to Prevent Maternal Mortality in Rural Mexico
Young Mexicans’ Hopes and Fears About Abortion and Abortion Law: A Qualitative Study in Two Cities. | 