Research

Dr. Obedin-Maliver is a board-certified obstetrician/gynecologist who provides clinical care and strives to advance scientific knowledge through her research. She practices full-spectrum gynecology including outpatient, in-patient, operative, and emergency care services. Her clinical care inspires and drives her research which focused on bringing visibility to and understanding the sexual and reproductive health needs of sexual and/or gender minority which include but are not limited to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning (LGBTQ+) people. Research projects include: understanding the preconception, perinatal, contraception, and abortion care needs of sexual and gender minority people, understanding and improving sexual function for SGM people, understanding the perinatal health outcomes associated with various family types and structures among others. Throughout her work she is interested in community-engaged research that positions the community-members and their perspectives at the center of research projects as well as work that challenged definitional categories within sexual and reproductive health towards promoting the health and well-being and equity of LGBTQ+ people.

Dr. Obedin-Maliver is the Co-Director of The Population Research in Identities and Disparities for Equality (PRIDE) Study (https://pridestudy.org), a multi-site online prospective longitudinal cohort of sexual and gender minority individuals that is based at Stanford University and conducted in conjunction with doctors and research scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). The goal of The PRIDE Study is to improve the health of LGBTQ+ people. The main over-arching research question we want to explore over many years is: how does being LGBTQ+ influence physical, mental, or social health? Participation is entirely through an online portal accessible from any web-enabled device. This dynamic cohort was started in 2017 and has ongoing recruitment. Working with PRIDEnet (below) the PRIDE Study team works to ensure that community-members are involved in every step of the process. Part of this through working closely with national community advisors throughout the research process and dissemination.

Dr. Obedin-Maliver enthusiastically combines her interests in research, advocacy, and medicine to expand community engagement with research through PRIDEnet, a national network that actively engages our communities to catalyze LGBTQ+ health research within and beyond The PRIDE Study. PRIDEnet builds on decades of work by activists, health advocates, service providers, and researchers to improve the health and well-being of LGBTQ+ communities. PRIDEnet helps ensure research that is created, analyzed, and shared from The PRIDE Study is disseminated to all The PRIDE Study and PRIDEnet’s stakeholders -- most importantly research participants themselves. In this way, PRIDEnet helps to ensure that  research doesn’t live and die in medical journals. To help realize the vision of catalyzing LGBTQ+ broadly, PRIDEnet works closely with a community partner consortium of roughly 30 organizations around the United States as well as an advisory group of community experts, known as the Participant Advisory Committee (PAC). PRIDEnet is also a community engagement partner for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) All of Us Research Program (AoURP), partnering to ensure that sexual and gender minority people are involved and visible in enrollment, retention, and dissemination efforts. More information about PRIDEnet can be found at https://pridenet.org/.

Dr. Obedin-Maliver serves on the medical advisory board of the UCSF Center of Excellence for Transgender Health and is helping to author the next version of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) Standards of Care (Version 8). Dr. Obedin-Maliver has also been active in health policy including involvement in helping to legally redefine consideration of sexually intimate partner status and to remove the Medicare Non-Coverage Determination ruling on gender-affirming surgeries.