Dawn Godbolt, PhD is a health policy analyst and maternal health expert at the National Partnership for Women & Families (NPWF), where she co-leads the maternal health portfolio. In this role she advocates for changes that would transform the health care system to better serve pregnant and childbearing women. She also advocates for policies that advance health equity and expand access to high quality affordable health care.
In her role at NPWF, Dr. Godbolt regularly writes letters to government agencies advocating for the roll-back of harmful health care policies, attends public stakeholder meetings with the Trump administration to highlight the deleterious consequences of newly proposed rules and regulations, and provides technical assistance to Congressional members as they draft health care legislation. Most recently, she was a key member of the team that drafted nine federal maternal health bills, known as the Momnibus , for Reps. Underwood and Adams and Senator Harris.
In addition to her work at NPWF, Dr. Godbolt sits on the National Quality Forum’s Maternal Morbidity and Mortality Committee, a multi-stakeholder body that provides recommendations to improve quality measures to evaluate maternal health experiences and outcomes. She also participates in the Ford Foundation’s Women of Color Maternal Health Convening, a gathering of maternal health experts who share and learn from one another, and the Women’s Health Defense Table, an advocacy organization that provides rapid-fire response to harmful federal regulations that could negatively affect women and families. Dr. Godbolt is currently a member of the March4Moms 2020 steering committee, one of Washington D.C.’s premier day-of-action advocacy organizers, and was part of a project team that secured a multi-year grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to research and promote best practices for health care providers. As a maternal health expert and advocate, her participation in these groups gives her the opportunity to advance recommendations that are patient-centered and focused on the needs of women of color, a group disproportionately impacted by systemic racism and social risk factors, including poverty, unstable housing and insufficient access to insurance.
While working on her Ph.D. in the Department of Sociology at Florida State University, Dr. Godbolt’s research examined racial differences in mothers’ fears about allowing children to be outside, racial disparities in neighborhood conditions, and the connections between stereotypes, religion and obesity. Upon completion of her doctorate, she worked as a health equity fellow with the Center for Global Policy Solutions and completed a fellowship with the OpEd Project. Prior to her work at NPWF, Dr. Godbolt also worked in homeless services, an experience that helped her to gain a better understanding of the social determinants of health among marginalized communities. Over the past few years, she has been featured in the Huffington Post, the Hill, Bustle, Forbes and Rewire News.
Dr. Godbolt’s advice to current PhD students is to outline what success post-PhD looks like for them as an individual. There are many different pathways to successful, fulfilling careers!