Jill Lens, the Robert A. Leflar Professor of Law and associate dean of research and faculty development, has been asked to serve on the National Institute of Child Health & Development's Stillbirth Working Group of Council.

The Stillbirth Working Group of Council is a congressionally mandated task force created to broadly examine stillbirth in the United States. Stillbirth is a pregnancy loss after 20 weeks of pregnancy and affects about one in 175 births in the United States. The task force is currently asked to focus on:

• Current knowledge on stillbirth and prevention,
• Areas of improvement for data collection,
• Current resources for families impacted by stillbirth and
• Next steps to gather data and lower the rate of stillbirth in the United States. 

The current working group is made up of representatives from the Centers for Disease Control and prevention, Indian Health Services, Health Resources and Services Administration and specialty organizations, as well as maternal-fetal medicine specialists, and will meet for the first time on Oct. 31.

"I was honored to be asked to serve, and I look forward to getting to work," Lens said. She was also asked to serve as co-lead for the Enhancing Resources for Families Impacted by Stillbirth sub-working group.

Lens has been on the faculty at the School of Law since 2018 and is the leading national expert on stillbirth and the law. Generally, her research focuses on how laws affect stillbirth prevention, how they affect the lived experience of stillbirth and how they shape cultural conceptions of stillbirth. Her work has been published in and or is forthcoming in the Michigan Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Vanderbilt Law Review, Washington University Law Review, Iowa Law Review, Boston University Law Review, UC Davis Law Review and Boston College Law Review. Lens' research is inspired by her son Caleb, who was stillborn at term in 2017.

About the University of Arkansas School of Law: The law school offers a competitive J.D. and is home to the nation's first LL.M. program in agriculture and food law. Led by nationally recognized faculty, the school offers students pro bono work, live client clinics, public service fellowships, competitions, and much more. Students also benefit from our location in one of the fastest growing, most livable, and economically vibrant regions in the U.S., and from our corporate externship partnerships with Fortune 500 companies. Our alumni have gone on to become judges, senators and governors, and we serve communities throughout our state and nation through programs such as the Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative. Our longstanding commitment to diversity and inclusion is exemplified by the Six Pioneers, the first Black students to attend law school in the South. Follow us at @uarklaw.