Joyce Adams is an assistant professor of the practice and the global maternal research lead at the Eck Institute for Global Health, concurrently appointed in the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame. She has been a Kellogg Institute faculty fellow since 2023.
Adams’ research addresses maternal health disparities that lead to mortality. More specifically, her research is dedicated to improving postpartum health outcomes among women most vulnerable to maternal mortality. She is highly motivated and passionate about using research interventions to improve maternal health, promote safe motherhood, and decrease maternal mortality and morbidity among vulnerable populations in the United States, and in Sub-Saharan Africa where the burden of maternal mortality is most severe.
Her research is guided by and contributes to the Three Delays Model originally developed by Thaddeus and Maine (1994). As principal investigator and co-investigator on multiple projects, Adams has experience conducting patient focused research examining both patient and healthcare facility factors that influence access to quality postpartum care and education. She is focused on developing interventions that can be scaled-up and adopted into existing systems of care to improve maternal health, promote safe motherhood, and decrease maternal mortality and morbidity.
She holds a PhD from the College of Nursing at Michigan State University.