Speaker

Davina Fankhauser

Davina Fankhauser, a trained educator and counselor, is a long-term family and children's advocate with a Bachelor's Degree in Psychology and Communications and a Master's Degree in Education. She has experience managing the national helpline and online services for RESOLVE: The National Infertility Organization and has served as Director of Advocacy for Resolve of New England.

Davina has personally and professionally lobbied in support of fertility health benefit mandates at the Massachusetts and Maine State Houses. She led the strategic effort to update the Massachusetts Definition of Infertility in 2010 by working closely with legislators. In addition, Davina has lobbied for infertility health benefits, national funding and family-building legislation in Washington D.C. Davina has established supportive relationships with fertility patients, medical clinics, legislators, businesses and organizations working within the field.

The greatest accomplishment in Davina's life is that she is a mother of two children, after 15 years of trying to build her much wanted family. For eight years she and her husband lived in states without insurance coverage mandates to diagnose and treat their infertility. She experienced, first hand, a lack of access to medically necessary care. This led to an undiagnosed medical condition that caused multiple miscarriages. Most of the treatment options Davina and her husband ultimately chose stemmed from financial pressures rather than medical recommendations. She has lived the cost associated with making such decisions.

Davina is driven to teach others how to advocate for themselves in the hope that they will be spared the pain and heartache known to accompany infertility, especially when denied access to timely and appropriate treatment. In addition she is passionate about helping youth preserve their reproductive health.