About

Cassondra Marshall is an Associate Professor in the Maternal, Child, and Adolescent Health program at UC Berkeley School of Public Health. Her research focuses on advancing reproductive and maternal health equity through the development, implementation, and evaluation of person-centered interventions and care delivery models aimed at underserved populations. Using mixed methods and implementation science, her work includes improving family planning care for women with chronic conditions such as diabetes, and exploring community doula care as an intervention to promote maternal and infant health equity. Prior to her current role, Dr. Marshall was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Kaiser Permanente Northern California Division of Research and worked as a research fellow in the Division of Reproductive Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She holds a DrPH from UC Berkeley, an MPH in Community Health Sciences from UCLA, and a BA in Human Biology from Stanford University. Her contributions include research on barriers to doula care investment, community-based doula programs, and health care delivery strategies to improve reproductive health outcomes.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Medicine
• Nursing
• Computer Science
• Virology
• Sociology
• Gerontology
• Psychology
• Public relations
• Social psychology
• Immunology

Selected publications

• Using Natural Language Processing to Describe the Use of an Online Community for Abortion During 2022: Dynamic Topic Modeling Analysis of Reddit Posts

  JMIR Infodemiology · 2025-06-10

  articleOpen access

  BACKGROUND: Abortion access in the United States has been in a state of rapid change and increasing restriction since the Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization decision from the US Supreme Court in June 2022. With further constraints on access to abortion since Dobbs, the internet and online communities are playing an increasingly important role in people's abortion trajectories. There is a need for a broader understanding of how online resources are used for abortion and how they may reflect changes in the sociopolitical and legal context of abortion access. Research using online information and leveraging methods to work efficiently with large textual datasets has the potential to accelerate knowledge generation and provide novel insights into changing abortion-related experiences following Dobbs, helping address these knowledge gaps. OBJECTIVE: This project sought to use natural language processing techniques, specifically topic modeling, to explore the content of posts to 1 online community for abortion (r/abortion) in 2022 and assess how community use changed during that time. METHODS: This analysis described and explored posts shared throughout 2022 and for 3 subperiods of interest: before the Dobbs leak (December 24, 2021-May 1, 2022), Dobbs leak to decision (May 2, 2022-June 23, 2022), and after the Dobbs decision (June 24, 2022-December 23, 2022). We used topic modeling to obtain descriptive topics for the year and each subperiod and then classified posts. Topics were then aggregated into conceptual groups based on a combination of quantitative and qualitative assessments. The proportion of posts classified in each conceptual group was used to assess change in community interests across the 3 study subperiods. RESULTS: The 7273 posts shared in r/abortion in 2022 included in our analyses were categorized into 8 conceptual groups: abortion decision-making, navigating abortion access barriers, clinical abortion care, medication abortion processes, postabortion physical experiences, potential pregnancy, and self-managed abortion processes. Posts related to navigating access barriers were most common. The proportion of posts about abortion decision-making and self-management changed significantly across study periods (P=.006 and P<.001, respectively); abortion decision-making posts were more common before the Dobbs leak, whereas those related to self-management increased following the leak and decision. CONCLUSIONS: This analysis provides a holistic view of r/abortion posts in 2022, highlighting the important role of online communities as abortion-supportive online resources and changing interests among posters with abortion policy changes. As policies and pathways to abortion access continue to change across the United States, approaches leveraging natural language processing with sufficiently large samples of textual data present opportunities for timely monitoring, with the potential to reflect a broad range of abortion experiences, including those of people who have limited or no interaction with clinical abortion care.

  PublisherDOI

• Matrescence: A Critical and Sensitive Period in the Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Life Course Perspective

  Women s Health Issues · 2025-12-08 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• An Interprofessional Collaboration Between a Community‐Based Doula Organization and Clinical Partners: The Champion Dyad Initiative

  Journal of Midwifery & Women s Health · 2025-01-18 · 5 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  As access to doula services expands through state Medicaid coverage and specific initiatives aimed at improving maternal health equity, there is a need to build and improve upon relationships between the doula community, hospital leaders, and clinical staff. Previous research and reports suggest rapport-building, provider education, and forming partnerships between community-based organizations and hospitals can improve such relationships. However, few interventions or programs incorporating such approaches are described in the literature. This article describes the development and 5 core components of the Champion Dyad Initiative (CDI), a novel program that uses bidirectional feedback between SisterWeb, a community-based doula organization, and 5 clinical sites (4 hospitals and one birthing center) to ensure pregnant and birthing people receive fair and equitable treatment. We also describe implementation challenges related to documentation, funding, and institutional support. The CDI is a promising model for community-based doula organizations and health care institutions to develop collaborative partnerships, build respectful doula-provider relationships, and work toward improving the pregnancy-related care that Black, Indigenous, and people of color receive in hospital and birth center settings. It is our hope that this innovative initiative can serve as a model that can be adapted for other locales, organizations, and hospitals.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Investing in the development of the next generation of MCH leaders

  Frontiers in Public Health · 2025-07-22

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The public health landscape is constantly evolving to address the strengths and needs of the community. Training for the public health workforce is leading the way, establishing an ecosystem approach that integrates individuals within social, political, and environmental contexts to promote health equity within a framework of social justice. One area of public health that is innovatively preparing the next generation of leaders is maternal and child health (MCH). In the United States, key indicators of health disparities within MCH remain stagnant, highlighting the need for training programs that develop future MCH professionals from diverse backgrounds. These professionals will deliver culturally and linguistically appropriate services for an increasingly underserved and underrepresented population, both in the US and around the world. The MCH Leadership, Education, and Advancement in Undergraduate Pathways (LEAP) training program provides coordinated opportunities for undergraduate students, faculty, agencies, organizations, and communities to work together for developing the future MCH public health workforce. Effective and respectful leadership development in MCH requires investment in fundamental educational, research, and community-engaged practice-based skill sets cultivated in undergraduate programs. Currently, six funded programs in the MCH LEAP portfolio share a collective mission to train undergraduates who have historically had a minimal presence to become MCH leaders of tomorrow. These programs also make changes to organizational structures that reflect the geographic and demographic representation of their communities. Mixed-methods evaluations, encompassing both qualitative and quantitative approaches, illustrate the MCH LEAP training program's effectiveness in introducing and developing the competencies for the next generation of the MCH workforce.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Increasing commercial coverage of doula services: perspectives from health plans and large employers in California

  Health Affairs Scholar · 2025-03-26

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Although Medicaid coverage of doula services has expanded since 2014, commercial coverage remains nascent. Little is known about what motivates private payers to cover doula support. Through qualitative interviews with staff members (n = 11) from health plans and employers that operate in California, we aimed to identify factors that could influence commercial coverage of doula services. In our first theme, we describe how a health plan or employer's commitment to birth equity can serve as a catalyst for commercial coverage of doula services. Second, participants noted that when considering new benefits, payers would review evidence related to doula support and weigh cost. The third theme centers on how consumer demand could impact a health plan or employer's appetite for adding a commercial doula benefit. The final theme highlights the operational considerations health plans and employers are contemplating, such as how to prioritize populations that could most benefit from doula support. Our findings suggest that the decision to cover doula support largely hinges on payer priorities. However, we found that health plans and employers interested in advancing birth equity were compelled by evidence supporting doula care, suggesting there may be opportunities to increase commercial coverage of doula services.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• “Sometimes the Doulas, They Need a Doula”: A Qualitative Analysis of Black and Pacific Islander Doulas’ Perspectives on Personal and Professional Growth as Birth Workers

  The Journal of Perinatal Education · 2025-03-18 · 1 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Using Natural Language Processing to Describe the Use of an Online Community for Abortion During 2022: Dynamic Topic Modeling Analysis of Reddit Posts (Preprint)

  2025-02-17

  preprint

  <sec> <title>BACKGROUND</title> Abortion access in the United States has been in a state of rapid change and increasing restriction since the &lt;i&gt;Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization&lt;/i&gt; decision from the US Supreme Court in June 2022. With further constraints on access to abortion since &lt;i&gt;Dobbs&lt;/i&gt;, the internet and online communities are playing an increasingly important role in people’s abortion trajectories. There is a need for a broader understanding of how online resources are used for abortion and how they may reflect changes in the sociopolitical and legal context of abortion access. Research using online information and leveraging methods to work efficiently with large textual datasets has the potential to accelerate knowledge generation and provide novel insights into changing abortion-related experiences following &lt;i&gt;Dobbs&lt;/i&gt;, helping address these knowledge gaps. </sec> <sec> <title>OBJECTIVE</title> This project sought to use natural language processing techniques, specifically topic modeling, to explore the content of posts to 1 online community for abortion (r/abortion) in 2022 and assess how community use changed during that time. </sec> <sec> <title>METHODS</title> This analysis described and explored posts shared throughout 2022 and for 3 subperiods of interest: &lt;i&gt;before the Dobbs leak&lt;/i&gt; (December 24, 2021-May 1, 2022), &lt;i&gt;Dobbs leak to decision&lt;/i&gt; (May 2, 2022-June 23, 2022), and &lt;i&gt;after the Dobbs decision&lt;/i&gt; (June 24, 2022-December 23, 2022). We used topic modeling to obtain descriptive topics for the year and each subperiod and then classified posts. Topics were then aggregated into &lt;i&gt;conceptual groups&lt;/i&gt; based on a combination of quantitative and qualitative assessments. The proportion of posts classified in each conceptual group was used to assess change in community interests across the 3 study subperiods. </sec> <sec> <title>RESULTS</title> The 7273 posts shared in r/abortion in 2022 included in our analyses were categorized into 8 conceptual groups: abortion decision-making, navigating abortion access barriers, clinical abortion care, medication abortion processes, postabortion physical experiences, potential pregnancy, and self-managed abortion processes. Posts related to navigating access barriers were most common. The proportion of posts about abortion decision-making and self-management changed significantly across study periods (&lt;i&gt;P&lt;/i&gt;=.006 and &lt;i&gt;P&lt;/i&gt;&amp;lt;.001, respectively); abortion decision-making posts were more common before the &lt;i&gt;Dobbs&lt;/i&gt; leak, whereas those related to self-management increased following the leak and decision. </sec> <sec> <title>CONCLUSIONS</title> This analysis provides a holistic view of r/abortion posts in 2022, highlighting the important role of online communities as abortion-supportive online resources and changing interests among posters with abortion policy changes. As policies and pathways to abortion access continue to change across the United States, approaches leveraging natural language processing with sufficiently large samples of textual data present opportunities for timely monitoring, with the potential to reflect a broad range of abortion experiences, including those of people who have limited or no interaction with clinical abortion care. </sec>

  PublisherDOI

• Relationship between experiencing a challenge or delay accessing contraception and contraceptive self-efficacy: Data from a 2022 nationally representative online survey

  Reproductive Health · 2025-04-15

  articleOpen access

  BACKGROUND: Previous research has found self-efficacy is associated with reproductive health behaviors and outcomes. However, few studies have quantitatively examined the relationship between barriers accessing contraception and self-efficacy. In addition, existing population-level metrics of contraceptive access tend to focus on method availability, uptake, and use, rather than people's self-defined needs and preferences. This study uses person-centered metrics to assess the relationship between experiencing a recent challenge or delay obtaining desired contraception and two measures of contraceptive self-efficacy. METHODS: In 2022, we fielded a nationally representative survey in English and Spanish using NORC's AmeriSpeak panel, surveying non-sterile 15- to 44-year-olds assigned female sex at birth in the U.S. We describe common challenges and delays obtaining contraception and present the distribution of experiencing a challenge or delay obtaining contraception by key sociodemographic and reproductive health characteristics. We also conduct logistic regression analyses to investigate associations between experiencing a challenge/delay and two measures of contraceptive self-efficacy: confidence in obtaining a desired method when wanted and perceived ease of switching methods when wanted. RESULTS: Among the analytic sample of respondents who had ever used or tried to obtain a contraceptive product, device, or procedure (unweighted n = 2,771), about 14% experienced a challenge/delay obtaining desired contraception in the past year. The most common reasons for challenges or delays were related to logistics (transportation, childcare, scheduling; 38.2%) and cost/insurance coverage (35.8%). Among those who experienced a challenge/delay obtaining desired contraception (unweighted n = 301), higher proportions were younger, identified as non-heterosexual, had lower educational attainment, and could afford smaller emergency expenses compared to the subgroup that did not experience a challenge/delay. Experiencing a challenge/delay was associated with decreased odds of feeling very or somewhat confident in obtaining a desired method (aOR 0.14; 95% CI 0.07, 0.25) and decreased odds of feeling it would be very or somewhat easy to switch contraceptive methods (aOR 0.48; 95% CI 0.33, 0.71). CONCLUSIONS: Eliminating barriers to contraceptive care is crucial to achieving person-centered access. Our research suggests that experiencing a challenge/delay has implications not only for recent contraceptive access but also influences self-efficacy, potentially inhibiting future ability to obtain and use desired contraception.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Perception of Having Enough Information to Make Contraceptive Decisions: A Novel Metric of Person-Centered Contraceptive Access

  Women s Health Issues · 2025-06-18 · 3 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Building Capacity for Research on Community Doula Care: A Stakeholder-Engaged Process in California

  Maternal and Child Health Journal · 2024-01-24 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  PURPOSE: In an effort to address persistent inequities in maternal and infant health, policymakers and advocates have pushed to expand access to doula care. Several states, including California, now cover doula services through Medicaid. As coverage expands, research on the impact of doula care will likely increase. To develop best practices for research, it is critical to engage community doulas, clients, and other key stakeholders. DESCRIPTION: Our overarching goal was to build capacity for future doula- and client-centered research on community doula care. First, we established a Steering Committee with members from seven relevant stakeholder groups: community doulas, former or potential doula clients, clinicians, payers, advocates, researchers, and public health professionals. Second, we conducted a needs assessment to identify and understand stakeholders' needs and values for research on community doula care. Findings from the needs assessment informed our third step, conducting a research prioritization to develop a shared research agenda related to community doula care with the Steering Committee. We adapted the Research Prioritization by Affected Communities protocol to guide this process, which resulted in a final list of 21 priority research questions. Lastly, we offered a training to increase capacity among community doulas to engage in research on community doula care. ASSESSMENT: Our findings provide direction for those interested in conducting research on doula care, as well as policymakers and funders. CONCLUSION: The findings of our stakeholder-engaged process provide a roadmap that will lead to equity-oriented research centering clients, doulas, and their communities.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Developing a Primary Care Intervention to Support Reproductive Decision-Making among Black and Latina Women of Reproductive Age with Type 2 Diabetes

  NIH · $685k · 2021–2027

Frequent coauthors

• Hector P. Rodríguez

  University of California, Berkeley

  29 shared

• Linh N. Bui

  California State University, Bakersfield

  25 shared

• Chris Miller‐Rosales

  Analysis Group (United States)

  25 shared

• Anu Manchikanti Gómez

  University of California, Berkeley

  24 shared

• Julie A. Schmittdiel

  Kaiser Permanente

  23 shared

• Andrea Altschuler

  Kaiser Permanente

  18 shared

• W. T. THISELTON DYER

  Kaiser Permanente

  17 shared

• Anjali Gopalan

  Kaiser Permanente Oakland Medical Center

  16 shared

Awards & honors

• 2021 Outstanding Young Professional Award from APHA
• NIH Career Development Award (2021)