Executive Director

Melanie Zurek has spent more than 10 years working on issues of reproductive health. Since joining AAP as its Executive Director in 2004, she has led the organization to strategically respond to growing disparities in abortion access and stewarded AAP’s continued growth as a national resource for innovative approaches to improving access.

Prior to AAP, Melanie served as the the Education Outreach and Training Manager for the Family Planning Program at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. At the Department of Health, she managed the program’s sexual and reproductive health education initiatives as well as provided training, outreach and community education resources to contracted family planning provider agencies across the state. Melanie has also served as the Coordinator of Professional Education at Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts. There she provided training in comprehensive sexuality education to parents, educators, and health professionals.

An educator and writer by training, Melanie’s career began teaching autobiographical writing workshops in New York City battered and homeless women’s shelters and has included work with government agencies, Native American tribes, and adjudicated minors. She has consulted on numerous health communications, curriculum development and professional training projects and served on the Board of Directors of the Eastern Massachusetts Abortion Fund. She received her B.A. from the New School for Social Research in New York and her Masters in Education from Harvard University.

Presentations

• Misoprostol Alone Abortion in the United States: Media and Messaging
  in No Mife, No Problem? Evaluating Alternatives to Mifepristone Medical Abortion
  Melanie Zurek with Lynn Borgatta, Lynn Paltrow and Susan Yanow Gynuity
  Annual Mifepristone Meeting, June 2007 New York
• Reproductive Health Advocacy: Current Debates and Strategies
  Boston University School of Public Health, April 2007, Boston
• Expanding the Role of Advanced Practice Clinicians in Abortion Care
  In On the Books, but Out of Reach
  Law Students For Choice National Conference, March 2007
• Medical Interventions that can Help and Hurt: How do we ensure women’s informed consent and women’s ability to protect their reproductive health and lives?
  National Advocates for Pregnant Women National Summit to Ensure the Health and Humanity of Pregnant and Birthing Women, January 2007, Atlanta
• Self Inducing Abortion with Misoprostol: Implications got Public Health and Access
  Harvard School of Public Health, November 2006, Boston
• Reproductive Health Advocacy: Current Debates and Strategies
  Boston University School of Public Health, June 2006, Boston
• Self-Administered Misoprostol
  In New Developments in Abortion Practice
  National Coalition of Abortion Providers Anuual Conference, May 2006, Crystal City, VA
• Access to Abortion for Poor Women in the United States
  Law Students for Choice National Conference
  February 2005, Cambridge

Publications

• Abortion education in nurse practitioner, physician assistant and nurse midwifery programs: a national survey.
  Foster A, Polis C, Allee MK, Simmonds K, Zurek M. Contraception 2006;73: 408-414.
• Letter to the Editor: “Paying for Abortion”
  Zurek M. Conscience 2006: 5
• The Healthy Talk Family Planning Campaign of Massachusetts: A Communications-centered Approach
  Hyunyi Cho, Petter Oehlkers, Juan Mandelbaum, Karen Edlund, Melanie Zurek Health Education 104(5) 314-325 2004