Interdisciplinary Student Team Places in Science Policy Writing Competition

A team of University of Michigan students earned second place in the Forefront and National Science Policy Network (NSPN) 2022 Science Policy Writing Competition in the fall. The winning paper included authors Natasha Dacic, a graduate student at U-M Climate & Space; Christina Del Greco, a graduate student in genetics and genomics; Natalia Harris, a graduate student in biological chemistry; Kelsey Kochan, a graduate student in pharmacology; and Elena Levi-D’Ancona, a graduate student in immunology.

The title of the paper was “No Choice, No Voice: Combating Abortion Barriers in the U.S.” It was written before the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision.

The judges asked the authors to describe their experiences researching, preparing, and distributing their briefs.

“We wanted to draw attention to abortion access programs at local levels to make people aware that these organizations exist, even within areas with severe abortion restrictions, especially as this was written before Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision. It is more important than ever to continue to spread information about access to resources!” wrote Kelsey Kochan, one of the authors on the paper.

A panel of expert science policy professionals reviewed the articles and chose them based on their timeliness, clarity of writing and intended audience, depth of research, detail, conclusions, the feasibility of recommendations, graphics, title, and overall accessibility. As part of the 2022 competition, 34 articles were published on Forefront, including the top three winning articles and three People’s Choice articles, which were chosen for their reader engagement analytics.

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