Desireé LaGrappe

Desireé LaGrappe, MSN/MPH, RN is a Lecturer and National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) PhD Scholar at La Trobe University’s Judith Lumley Centre, School of Nursing and Midwifery. She is also the Chair of La Trobe's Reducing Gender-based Violence Network (ReGEN) and Health Network Coordinator of the La Trobe / Austin Health Clinical School. Her PhD research focuses on reproductive coercion and abuse, a form of gender-based violence describing controlling and abusive behaviors over contraception use, pregnancy, and abortion decisions. The project is a part of SPHERE, an NHMRC-funded Centre for Research Excellence to improve sexual and reproductive health services for women across Australia. Desireé is a public health nurse clinically accredited in sexual and reproductive health with 15 years’ experience in nursing and research within the U.S.A., Australia and select low- to middle-income countries. She is a recent Fulbright Public Policy Fellow having worked in Vietnam with the World Health Organization's Human Reproduction Programme Alliance for Research Capacity Strengthening in Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights and its Regional Hub for the Western-Pacific based at Hanoi Medical University. Desireé has a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (Honors) from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Master of Nursing/ Master of Public Health from Johns Hopkins University.