The State of Rural Reproductive Health

Kristen Brewer

Academic and Sex Educator

Dr. Brewer has experience in community-building, teaching, and research in the field of sexual and reproductive health education. Her research focuses on perceptions and attitudes regarding barriers to SRH access and education in legislatively restrictive states. This includes aspects such as inclusive sex education, abortion services, and contraceptive access. Dr. Brewer co-founded a grassroots organization, Ruth's Army, in middle Tennessee to help rural communities access SRH services and education. In addition to educational workshops and panels, this led to a partnership with a local women's health clinic to open the REACH Clinic, a no-cost education and reproductive clinic in Clarksville, TN.

Rebekah Rollston

Family Medicine Physician and Researcher

Dr. Rollston is a family medicine physician at Cambridge Health Alliance, a Harvard-affiliated safety net health system in Greater Boston, and she also serves at the Indian Health Service (IHS) Rosebud Service Unit in South Dakota (in partnership with the Massachusetts General Hospital Rural Medicine Program). She earned her Medical Degree from East Tennessee State University Quillen College of Medicine (in the Rural Primary Care Track) and her Master of Public Health from The George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health. She completed her residency at Tufts University Family Medicine Residency at Cambridge Health Alliance, with specialized training in family planning and addiction medicine. Dr. Rollston’s professional interests focus on social determinants of health & health equity, gender-based violence, sexual & reproductive health, addiction medicine, rural health, homelessness & supportive housing, and immigrant health.

Lena Cerbone

Rural Nurse-Midwife

Lena Antimonova Cerbone CNM is a certified nurse midwife in Albright West Virginia.  She graduated from Harvard University in Russian Languages and Literature in 1988 and from Yale University School of Nursing in 1994. She has 30 years of experience working in rural (and less rural) healthcare settings in CT, NY, OR, IL, and now WV, PA, and MD.  She has taught nurses, medical students, EMS, and medical residents to respect and further physiologic birth.  Her passion is to provide all clients excellent care no matter their education or income level (or how far off the highway they may live.)

Currently she attends home births in WV, PA, and MD. She is mother to three children born at home and attended by midwives.

Jenifer McKenna

Lawyer, Writer, and Abortion Rights Activist

Jenifer McKenna is CPC Program Director at Reproductive Health & Freedom Watch. She brings over 30 years of advocacy experience to this role, and deep expertise in reproductive rights law. She is co-founder of California Women's Law Center where she served as Managing Director in the 1990s and 2000s. From 2012-2022 she coordinated The Alliance, a first-time collaboration of state gender law and policy centers, managed cross-state advocacy to advance reproductive and gender justice, and led the first multi-state CPC investigation. A nationally recognized expert on crisis pregnancy centers, she consults with public officials and advocates around the US on CPC practices and accountability. She is a contributing reporter for Ms. Magazine.

Yesmar Oyarzun

Brandeis Professor of Anthropology