| Summary: | Dr. Roger Rochat completed his residency at Charity Hospital in New Orleans. He joined CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service and was assigned to the Family Planning Evaluation Activity and the Georgia Health Department. One of his first tasks was to determine whether the new Georgia state law legalizing abortion would reduce maternal mortality. Because of restrictive access to services, it would not. A lawyer cited this social inequity in Doe v. Bolton, the Supreme Court case from Georgia that was decided concurrently with Roe v. Wade. In 1981, Dr. Rochat became the first Director of the Division of Reproductive Health for the CDC. In 1985, he developed the Global Health Track in Community Health at Emory, then worked 2 years for USAID in India, and then spent six years developing Maternal and Child Health epidemiology in the Georgia Health Department. After 30 years with CDC, working in 30+ countries and with many State Health Departments, he retired from CDC in 1999, went with his brother briefly to Antarctica, and then joined the Rollins School of Public Health where he has appointments in Departments of Global Health and Epidemiology and in Emory Medical school’s Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics. He serves as Director of Graduate Studies, Hubert Department of Global Health and co-teaches four public health courses related to reproductive health, including The GEMMA Seminar: The Global Elimination of Maternal Mortality from Abortion.  Roger and Susan Rochat have endowed the GEMMA fund to support Emory MPH students conducting international research aimed at eliminating maternal deaths from abortion. Roger Rochat discusses his life's work involving maternal mortality, abortion, family planning and reproductive health. The interview touches upon his time at CDC, USAID and his research in demography abroad as well as in the United States.
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