Kelsey Holt, ScD, MA

Assistant Professor, Department of Family & Community Medicine

Dr. Holt is a social and behavioral scientist with training in anthropology and public health. She is a faculty member within the Person-Centered Reproductive Health Program. Dr. Holt’s research focuses on two main themes:

1. documenting individuals’ preferences for and experiences with reproductive health care, and improving quantitative measurement of patient experience; and
2. identifying evidence-based approaches to improving reproductive health care services that take into account individual, interpersonal, health system, and policy related factors.

Dr. Holt and colleagues developed and validated the client-reported Quality of Contraceptive Counseling (QCC) Scale in Mexico as a tool for ensuring quality and fulfilment of human rights in family planning services. The QCC Scale is now being adapted for India and Ethiopia, based on their qualitative research on women’s preferences for counseling in those settings, and the India and Ethiopia versions will soon be validated. Dr. Holt also conducts quantitative and qualitative research with health care providers. Most recently, she and her colleagues conducted a nationally representative survey of primary care physicians in the United States about their training, practices, and opinions related to abortion provision, pregnancy options counseling, abortion referral-making, and contraceptive care. Dr. Holt is also involved in work in the United States to improve access to patient-centered contraceptive care.