Anne Drapkin Lyerly, MD, MA

Anne Drapkin Lyerly, MD, MA is an obstetrician/gynecologist, researcher, bioethicist and author. She practiced general obstetrics and gynecology for more than a decade at Duke and Johns Hopkins before joining the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as the Associate Director of the Center for Bioethics and Associate Professor with appointments in the departments of Social Medicine and Obstetrics and Gynecology.

In her writing and research, she tackles morally complicated issues in women’s health and reproduction, always trying to always bring the viewpoints of those most affected by how medicine is practiced to the debates that surround their care.

A Good Birth, to be published in August 2013 by Penguin/Avery Group(USA) is her first book –- and a rigorous if deeply personal culmination of her journey as an obstetrician, researcher and mother. It is based on The Good Birth Project, her landmark study interviewing more than 100 diverse women to describe what “a good birth” really means those who’ve been through it.

Dr. Lyerly’s work has appeared in numerous journals, including Science, the Hastings Center Report and The American Journal of Public Health, as well as the New York Times. She has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Greenwall Foundation’s Faculty Scholars Program. She co-founded the Second Wave Initiative, a project to advance the evidence base for treatment of medical illness during pregnancy through ethically responsible research involving pregnant women. She also co-founded the Obstetrics and Gynecology Risk Research Group, which brings together experts from a variety of disciplines to critically examine how risk assessed and managed in the context of pregnancy. She was the 2007-2009 Chair the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists Committee on Ethics and Co-chair of the 2009 Program Committee for the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities. She currently serves on the NIH Advisory Committee to the Director Working Group on Human Embryonic Stem Cell Review and the National Bioethics Advisory Committee for the March of Dimes.

Dr. Lyerly actually likes to be called “Annie.” She lives in Chapel Hill with her husband Kim and their four boys.