Lyndsey Garrett, MPH ’27, pursues Harvard Chan training to expand fight for bodily autonomy
When Professor of the Practice of Public Health John McDonough—one of the architects of the Affordable Care Act—asks his U.S. Health Policy class a question, Lyndsey Garrett listens closely.
For three years, she had worked at breakneck speed as a reproductive rights advocate at the Center for Reproductive Rights, nodding along to policy discussions about 1557 waivers and health care regulations she didn’t fully understand. There wasn’t time to ask what the terms meant—she just had to keep going. Now, pursuing her MPH at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Garrett is finally getting what she calls a “retroactive education” in the very policies she was fighting to advance.
“I’ve been glued to every word he’s saying,” she says of McDonough. “Just getting to interact with him and see such an important figure who’s so passionate about teaching younger generations is exciting.”
During her time at the Center for Reproductive Rights, she advanced from federal policy associate to senior associate, working directly on federal lobbying efforts for abortion rights and holding policymakers accountable for their reproductive health obligations.
Garrett recalls the fast-paced nature of working at the center, where staff were expected to absorb information almost immediately. “They’d give me a brief overview and say, ‘Okay, that’s all you need to go because we are triaging [legal cases] right now.’” While everyone expected her to follow the traditional path of reproductive rights advocates to law school, Garrett chose the public health route at the Harvard Chan School instead. She wanted something more comprehensive than litigation; an approach rooted in care and prevention rather than courtroom battles.
“I think a lot of people, my whole family, thought I was going to be a lawyer,” she says. “But it just didn’t feel aligned with the vision I have of working for expanded rights.”
Building the foundation for deeper impact
Garrett’s decision to come to the Harvard Chan School was influenced by the program’s requirement that students have at least two years of work experience. “I don’t think you can teach real-world work experience,” she explains. “I wanted my peers to have that background with me.” That experience requirement meant Garrett would be surrounded by classmates doing incredible things, including active physicians, policy experts, and seasoned advocates.
Garrett jokes that she occasionally discovered classmates’ credentials by surprise. When a professor asked who among the students was a physician, she had a “jump scare” moment watching a hand go up next to her. “I had no idea a doctor was sitting next to me,” she says. These moments underscored how much collective knowledge she had access to.
This sense of community existed alongside another reality: the cost of graduate school. As the daughter of a single mother who had already put three children through their undergraduate studies, Garrett was acutely aware of every cost.
“Even if I got in, I didn’t know if I could go,” she admits. But after realizing there were scholarships available—and being awarded one—accepting became a “no-brainer.”
The scholarship didn’t just make the Harvard Chan School financially possible; it freed Garrett to focus on her evolving vision as a reproductive rights advocate. She’s exploring how bioethics can inform more comprehensive policies around bodily autonomy, expanding her focus beyond reproductive rights to include end-of-life care and what she defines as the “right to a good birth and a good death.”
“Right now, federal policy is going to be gridlocked until at least 2029, if not later,” she explains. “So, I’m trying to think about how to get more creative with policy, especially when it comes to bodily autonomy.”
Garrett credits a philosophy shared during the School’s orientation, that if a student leaves with the same path they came in with, its mission hasn’t been fulfilled. She’s embracing that openness, especially as reproductive rights remain under attack nationwide, and she will likely pivot many times to pursue her vision.
Learning directly from architects of landmark legislation like McDonough has shaped how she thinks about policy innovation—showing her that transformative change is possible even in gridlocked systems.
“We need the most knowledgeable minds working on this right now,” Garrett says.
“I wanted to know more and understand policy from all different lenses so I could apply that to reproductive rights—and maybe discover new ways to make an impact I hadn’t considered before.”
