Research groups
Colleges
Sahana Narayan
MS, MSPH
DPhil Student
- Interests: Maternal-Fetal Medicine, Intrapartum Fetal Monitoring, Clinical Bioethics, Informed Consent, Maternal Health Equity, Risk Communication and Assessment
Background
Sahana Narayan, MS, MSPH is a maternal health researcher and doctoral student in the Oxford Labour Monitoring Group, where she is pursuing a fully funded DPhil (PhD) in Women’s and Reproductive Health through the Oxford-Medical Research Council Doctoral Training Partnership (Oxford MRC-DTP). She is being supervised by Dr. Antoniya Georgieva and Dr. Angeliki Kerasidou.
Her research examines how clinicians interpret fetal monitoring data (cardiotocography) and intrapartum risk, and how these interpretations influence escalation, consent, and shared decision-making during labor. She aims to investigate how risk is communicated, negotiated, and acted upon under conditions of uncertainty, and how these processes shape maternal autonomy and childbirth experiences. Using empirical bioethics and mixed-methods approaches, she endeavors to reduce adverse outcomes such as fetal hypoxia, stillbirth, postpartum hemorrhage, eclampsia, sepsis, and maternal mortality, and to develop ethically robust frameworks and tools that improve the quality and safety of maternity care.
Prior to her DPhil, Sahana completed a Master of Science in Media, Medicine, and Health at Harvard Medical School, where her thesis examined the implications of obstetric violence for maternal mortality in the United States, integrating narrative analysis with clinical ethics and communication practices. She also earned a Master of Science in Public Health and Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia University, completing a thesis on the Vaginal Birth After Cesarean (VBAC) algorithm and how the use of race-based correction factors contribute to inequitable care and biased risk assessment. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Clinical Public Health from the University of California, San Diego, where her work centered on healthcare disparities and reproductive justice.
Recognizing that maternal-fetal outcomes arise from both clinical risk and structural inequities, Sahana’s work bridges maternal health, public health, and health services research. She aims to strengthen equity, elevate both patient and clinician voices, and improve the quality and ethics of reproductive care.
Education
Master of Science (MS), Harvard Medical School (2023)
Master of Science in Public Health (MSPH), Columbia University (2022)
Bachelor of Science (Honors), University of California, San Diego (2021)