Dr. Ronna Popkin

Ronna Popkin, Ph.D., is a program director in PDB, managing the branch’s programs in family planning, sexual behavior, and reproductive and sexual health interventions. She originally joined PDB in 2016 as a program analyst and became a program official in 2019. Her research interests focus on social and behavioral research on reproductive and sexual health, the geneticization of risk, and gender and health. She is also the PDB contact for NICHD’s Small Business programs.

In addition to her PDB duties, Dr. Popkin is NICHD’s inclusion officer, providing scientific oversight of the collection and reporting of inclusion data for all NICHD-supported research. She also serves on the research coordinating committee of the NIH Sexual & Gender Minority Research Office and on the Federal Committee on Statistical Methodology’s Measuring Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Research Group. She is a coordinator of the NIH Common Fund’s Advancing Health Communication Science and Practice program, in which she co-leads the Methods and Measurement Initiative.

Prior to joining NICHD, Dr. Popkin worked as a community health educator for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin and lectured on gender, women’s health, and sexuality education for courses at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Dr. Popkin earned her Ph.D. and M.Phil. in sociomedical sciences, an interdisciplinary program in public health and sociology, from Columbia University, where she was supported by an NICHD-funded T32 grant. She holds an M.S. in curriculum and instruction/health education and a B.S. in women’s studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her mixed-methods research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, American Association of University Women, and the Horowitz Foundation.