Janet Rich-Edwards is assistant professor in both the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health and the Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention at Harvard Medical School. Her primary research interests include prenatal and childhood determinants of adult-onset disease, predictors of fertility and pregnancy outcome, and lifestyle determinants of women's health in adulthood.

Says Rich-Edwards, "The lens that I bring to this panel is still very novel and challenging, even, to medicine, public health, and certainly public policy." Rich-Edwards considers women's reproductive health from a lifecourse perspective. She attempts to determine how woman's childhood health can predict her future health and ponders the public policy implications of her preliminary findings.