Rate My Professor Heather Sipsma

Dr. Heather Sipsma is the Director of the Graduate Public Health Program and Associate Professor of Public Health in Gordon College's School of Science, Technology and Health, positions she assumed upon joining the college in 2021. She serves as the founding director of the Master of Public Health (MPH) program, which welcomed its first cohort in fall 2022. Sipsma brings a robust academic and professional background, including a B.A. in Public Health Studies from Johns Hopkins University and a Ph.D. in Epidemiology from Yale School of Public Health. Her career encompasses research on fetal development at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, a Research Associateship in Health Policy and Management at Yale University, Assistant Professorships at the University of Illinois Chicago (Department of Women, Children and Family Health Science, 2012-2015) and Benedictine University (Department of Public Health), and a role as Research Professional at the University of Chicago. Additionally, she has experience in consulting and post-doctoral work focused on health systems strengthening in global health.

Sipsma's research centers on epidemiology in maternal and child health, particularly adolescent risk behaviors, prevention of adolescent pregnancy, postpartum depressive symptoms, breastfeeding—especially among adolescent mothers—birth spacing, and maternal mental health. Her doctoral dissertation analyzed future expectations as predictors of risk behaviors among adolescents, highlighting connections to pregnancy outcomes, educational attainment, and economic stability. She has conducted studies on topics such as poor mental health prevalence in Ghana, intimate partner violence among low-income women in Mexico City and its impact on child school attendance, the effect of breastfeeding on postpartum depression in young mothers, and healthcare utilization among empowered women in Liberia. Notable publications include "Poor mental health in Ghana: who is at risk?" published in BMC Public Health in 2013, "Depression during Pregnancy among Young Couples" in the Journal of Pediatric and Adolescent Gynecology in 2012, "Future Expectations Among Adolescents: A Latent Class Analysis" in American Journal of Community Psychology in 2011, "Pregnancy Desire Among a Sample of Young Couples Who Are Expecting a Baby" in 2012, and "Intimate Partner Violence Against Low-Income Women in Mexico City and Associations with Child School Attendance: A Latent Class Analysis" in 2020. Sipsma has published numerous journal articles and presented her findings at various conferences, contributing to evidence-based practices aimed at reducing health disparities in vulnerable populations.