Diana Greene Foster, PhD

Diana Greene Foster, PhD, is a professor at the University of California, San Francisco. She is a demographer who uses quantitative models and analyses to evaluate the effectiveness of family planning policies and the effect of unwanted pregnancy on people’s lives. She led the Turnaway Study, a nationwide longitudinal prospective study of the health and well-being of women who seek abortion including both women who do and do not receive the abortion. Dr. Foster’s work has demonstrated the effect of subsidized contraceptives and dispensing a one year supply of contraception in reducing the incidence of unintended pregnancy. She is the author of over 130 scientific papers as well as the 2020 Scribner book, The Turnaway Study: Ten Years, a Thousand Women and the Consequences of Having – or Being Denied – an Abortion. She has collaborated with scientists on a Nepal Turnaway Study and is currently working with scientists from across the country on a study of the health, legal and economic consequences of the end of Roe. She was named a 2023 MacArthur Foundation fellow and one of ten people who shaped science in 2022 by the journal Nature. Dr. Foster received her undergraduate degree from UC Berkeley, her MA and PhD in Demography and Public Policy from Princeton University.

For a full list of Dr. Foster's publications, awards, and presentations, click here.