Research Ethics Grand Round

Emerging Perspectives on HIV Research with Pregnant Women

Dr. Anne Drapkin Lyerly is an Associate Professor of Social Medicine and Associate Director of the Center for Bioethics at UNC. Dr. Lyerly will discuss the considerations that led to her recently awarded NIH grant to study the barriers, challenges and opportunities to conducting research involving pregnant women at risk for or infected with HIV. Through engagement with research, ethics, regulatory and legal communities, the project is aimed at developing a consensus around a sustainable
way forward in HIV research in pregnancy.

Trained in both obstetrics and gynecology and bioethics, Dr. Lyerly addresses morallycomplicated issues at the intersection of reproductive medicine and biomedical research. She has chaired the Ethics Committee of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, currently serves on the National Bioethics Committee of the March of Dimes, and recently authored A Good Birth (Penguin, USA) aimed at describing what a “good birth” means according to childbearing women. She co-founded, with Maggie Little and Ruth Faden, the Second Wave Initiative, an effort to ensure that the health interests of pregnant women are fairly represented in biomedical research and drug and device policies.