September 2019

New Clinician Pack Available Now! 

The Clinician Pack is the newest addition to our online store!

The Clinician Pack is a compiled set of the latest clinical tools to use in the exam room with your patients. Available in English, it includes the following tools on contraception, ectopic pregnancy, and early pregnancy loss (miscarriage) management:

• Quick Start Algorithm explains how health care providers can Quick Start contraception. Quick Start means initiating birth control use on the day of an office visit, at any point in the patient’s menstrual cycle.
• Phone Triage Call is an algorithm for managing phone calls from patients experiencing bleeding during medication or expectant management of early pregnancy loss.
• Diagnosis and Treatment of Ectopic Pregnancy is an algorithm to help determine diagnosis and treatment of ectopic pregnancy.
• Medical Eligibility Criteria for Initiating Contraception is a reference tool for health care providers who want to check a patient’s medical eligibility for various forms of contraception as they relate to absolute and relative contraindications. Information is based on the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) and the World Health Organization’s (WHO) recommendations for initiating contraceptives.

This pack joins our Exam Room Pack as another resource to have on hand for easy reference during patient care. Our original set, the Exam Room Pack, has five of our most popular patient education materials that are easy for everyone to understand:

• Your Birth Control Choices
• Birth Control for Men
• IUD Facts
• Miscarriage Treatment Options
• Early Abortion Options

Our Exam Room Pack is now also available in Spanish!

All of RHAP’s clinical tools and resources are evidence-based and patient-centered medicine, so you can trust that they are medically accurate and frequently updated to reflect the latest research. RHAP is pharma-free — we do not take any funding from pharmaceutical companies and we do not endorse specific brands or products. All of the proceeds from our online store go towards helping us develop more evidence-based reproductive health care resources.

Whether they’re for an ectopic pregnancy or early pregnancy loss, or different methods of contraception or abortion options, our clinical resources are an asset to patient-centered care.

You can download any of our resources for free from our website or purchase them from our online store.

 

Join the Access Circle Today!

“Primary care providers are oftentimes the easiest route to access care for basic ailments such as a cold or getting a physical, so why shouldn’t they also be trained in reproductive health care so that they can provide better patient care?“ – Carol Holley

Our monthly donor, Carol Holley, shared her personal story with our community. She strongly feels that there is a huge need for access to reproductive health care. Her story, along with others, inspired us to create a monthly giving program to help sustain our work, so that we can advocate for access to abortion, contraception, and miscarriage care for everyone.

RHAP educates and trains primary care clinicians to provide access to comprehensive reproductive health care here in the United States.

Thanks to your contribution, we embark on this critical mission every day.

You can make your support go further by joining the Access Circle Community. Month after month, you can increase access, reduce stigma, and mainstream abortion care in this country.

By becoming a monthly donor, you can:

• Increase access to reproductive health care by helping RHAP train more clinicians to incorporate this care into primary care practice.
• Empower more patients to be in control of their reproductive health by helping RHAP develop more patient education materials.
• Mainstream abortion, contraception, and miscarriage care by helping RHAP educate more clinicians on these topics.

A generous donor has agreed to match all donations, but only if 25 people join the Access Circle.

Your donation of $5, $15, $25, or more will be matched month to month for a whole year!

We need 14 new monthly donors by September 30th for the match to kick in. Will you help us reach our goal of 25 new monthly donors to mainstream, empower, and increase access to reproductive health care?

We hope you can support us by joining the Access Circle Community.

If you have any questions about the campaign or would like to contribute, please email Nushin Bhimani, our Development Officer, at nushin@reproductiveaccess.org.

 

Making Abortion Safe and Accessible, Worldwide

September 28th is International Safe Abortion Day – it’s also the 19th anniversary of the FDA’s approval of mifepristone here in the U.S. Mifepristone, in combination with misoprostol pills, has the potential to transform abortion, making it safe and accessible worldwide.

Mifepristone’s accessibility varies from country to country. In places where abortion is illegal, people are able to purchase these abortion pills online. In Canada, the pills are easily available in pharmacies, while in the U.S., it’s harder to obtain the medication. That’s because the FDA has classified mifepristone as a dangerous drug, which requires clinicians to register with the drug manufacturer if they want to provide the medication to patients. Currently, it is impossible for a patient to receive a prescription for mifepristone. While this may not seem like a big deal, federal and state laws make it extremely difficult for many health facilities to stock and dispense mifepristone. To make matters worse, the Trump administration’s new rules for Title X fully prohibit health facilities that receive federal funds for contraceptive care to provide medication abortion. The only way a practice can dispense mifepristone is in a standalone facility, physically apart from their family planning clinic.

The Reproductive Health Access Project has been working to raise awareness about how the FDA’s overregulation of mifepristone has made it harder to access safe abortion. We believe that mifepristone should be available by prescription at pharmacies, in physical and online locations.

On September 28th you can join us on social media and participate in the Safe Abortion Global Day of Action. Follow us on Facebook @reproductiveaccess and Twitter @RHAP1. Send us a message about why it’s important that abortion remain safe and easy to access!

 

Title X Congressional Hearing: Notes From a Former RHAP Intern

Earlier this summer, while interning in Washington, D.C., I attended a House Energy and Commerce hearing titled, “Protecting Title X and Safeguarding Quality Family Planning Care,” which addressed the Trump Administration’s new Title X regulations. These rules forbid Title X participants from providing full options counseling and/or referrals for abortion care.

One of the key witnesses was Diane Foley, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Office of Population Affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). As I listened to her testimony, I was reminded of my work with RHAP, when I sent comments from RHAP supporters to HHS about Title X funding changes. In her testimony, Foley mentioned that there were many reports of confusion about Title X funds within co-located facilities. When compiling RHAP’s letters, I would read about all the providers worrying about how these rule changes would affect their ability to provide care.

Unsurprisingly, the hearing was extremely partisan. While Democratic committee members focused on trust in the patient-provider relationship, and how access to care would be affected, Republicans stressed the importance of “program integrity” to ensure that no funds would be used for abortion services. Thankfully, the Chair of the Committee, Diana DeGette, tried to maintain decorum, while also pointing out whenever Republican members asked biased questions towards certain witnesses in order to receive their desired answers on the record.

My summer at RHAP helped shape my interests in reproductive health care and prepared me for my Congressional internship this year. This hearing felt very relevant to my work with RHAP.

Jackie Sobol is a rising senior at the University of Michigan where she studies Political Science, Women’s Studies, and Sociology. Jackie interned with RHAP in summer 2018 as a program intern.