September 2021

 

The People’s Brief: Sign on if you’ve had an abortion

As oral arguments at the Supreme Court for Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Center draw closer, our friends at We Testify and Advocates for Youth are putting together The People’s Brief, an amicus brief that elevates the stories and experiences of people who have had abortions. This brief will be submitted to the Supreme Court in advance of oral arguments, and will share abortion stories signed exclusively by people who’ve had abortions. 

If you would like to sign on to the People’s Brief, please do so here. Please note that signatures are due today, September 14. 

We know that the future of abortion access hangs on the outcome of this case. It’s time for the Supreme Court to listen to the stories from people who have had abortions. Sign here.

If you have not had an abortion, please share The People’s Brief with your family, friends, and loved ones who have had abortions.

 

Celebrate Telehealth Awareness Week with RHAP

The Reproductive Health Access Project is pleased to be a part of Telehealth Awareness Week this September 19th to 25th. We invite the RHAP community to join us in celebrating and reflecting on this fast-evolving field with Telemedicine for Sexual & Reproductive Health – an expert-led panel discussion that will provide an overview of the provision of telehealth for contraception, early pregnancy loss care, abortion care, prenatal care, and gender-affirming care on Thursday, September 23rd at 8:00 ET (5:00pm PT). 

The pandemic has spurred an expansion of telemedicine across all fields of medicine, including sexual and reproductive health care. While the rapid growth of telehealth has presented an evolving set of barriers to providing care, innovations are emerging that leverage these changes to help expand and improve access in new ways.

On Thursday, September 23rd at 8:00 ET (5:00pm PT), we invite you to hear from and submit your questions to clinicians across the country who are practicing telemedicine for sexual and reproductive health, including: 

 

Contraception – Liz Kaltman, ND, MPH, NCMP

Early pregnancy loss care – Tina Wheat, MD, MPH

Abortion care – Angeline Ti, MD, MPH

Gender-affirming care – Lin-Fan Wang, MD 

Prenatal care – Kaity Molé, CNM, PMHNP-BC, SANE-A

Sign up to learn more.

 

Protect Reproductive Health Care! Join the Access Circle

As we have seen this past year, access to reproductive health care in the United States is increasingly becoming more challenging. It’s time to do something about it. 

The Reproductive Health Access Project mobilizes, trains, and supports clinicians to make reproductive health care accessible to everyone. We cannot continue to do this work without the support of our donors. Clinicians in states that are facing legislative bans – or those in nearby states that are gearing up for an influx of patients seeking care – need our support! 

Are you ready to take your giving to the next level? Join the Access Circle! 

Our monthly donors are the backbone of our organization, providing the long-term support we need to make an impact all year long. When you donate to RHAP, you’re supporting programs like our Reproductive Health Care and Advocacy Fellowship. 

“I donate monthly to the Reproductive Health Access Project because RHAP has been a lifeline to my work as a teacher and family physician. Much of my work depends on RHAP’s community of like-minded colleagues, listservs, local community clusters, fellowships, and patient and provider resources.  According to the American Academy of Family Physicians, the definition of “family physician” is having skills and knowledge “to provide continuing and comprehensive medical care…to each member of the family regardless of gender, age or type of problem.” RHAP helps fulfill my promise of being a family physician by supporting my ability to provide comprehensive reproductive services, including essential abortion services in my practice. RHAP empowers me to support and care for patients whether they choose to carry a pregnancy to term or not.” – Emily Godfrey, MD, MPH, a family medicine faculty member of the Fellowship and a monthly donor.

A generous supporter has offered to donate $500 for each of the first ten people to sign up for recurring monthly donations. And if you commit to a monthly gift $25 or more, you’ll receive a package with RHAP swag! 

Start your monthly gift today!

 

Take Action: Pass WHPA Now!

Last week, RHAP shared some ways in which our community can support reproductive health care clinicians, advocates, activists, and patients in Texas after the passage of SB8. SB8 is a draconian anti-abortion law that bans all abortions after six weeks and allows private citizens to enforce this law and bring a civil suit against anyone who provides or assists a pregnant person in getting an abortion. 

SB8 is currently in effect and causing untold harm to pregnant people in Texas, especially folks who cannot travel out of state for abortion care. However, on September 9, United States Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that the Department of Justice is suing Texas over this ban. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has also agreed to bring the Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA) to the floor of the House for a vote next week. WHPA is a federal bill that creates a statutory right for providers to provide abortion care and patients to receive abortion care, free from medically unnecessary restrictions and bans. WHPA will end laws such as SB8 and other abortion restrictions in states across the country. This is why we must ALL act now and tell Congress to protect access to abortion care nationwide. 

Tell your representatives to pass WHPA now. Thank you for taking action!

   

Meet Our Fellows

Every year, RHAP selects a cohort of powerful, diverse, and inspiring family physicians dedicated to providing, teaching, and advocating for equitable and person-centered reproductive health care for our Reproductive Health Care and Advocacy Fellowship. We are so thrilled to welcome these six clinicians to our vibrant, diverse community of clinical leaders and change-makers. Take some time to get to know our 2021-2022 cohort!

Chelsea Faso (she/her) is an Afro-Latina family physician from NYC who finished her Family Medicine Residency program at Montefiore in the Bronx. She spent most of her life in NY/NYC but has spent time solo traveling/volunteering in Peru and Guatemala. She and her partner are looking to grow their family with a fur baby in the next upcoming months. Besides Reproductive Justice, she has a strong interest in Immigrant Justice as well. She loves traveling, hiking, cooking, reading, and taking care of her many plants! She’ll be completing fellowship in New York. 

Deyang Nyandak (she/her, pronounced “They-young”) was born in India and moved with her family to New Jersey while in high school. She went straight through to medical school and finished family medicine residency at Cambridge Health Alliance in MA, where she is now completing fellowship. 

Hannah Rosenfield (she/her) grew up outside of Boston before heading to Maine for college. She spent a few years traveling/hiking, volunteering, and working prior to medical school (the best bit in Chile and Peru). She was drawn back to Portland, ME for residency and is excited to explore Michigan in fellowship! She lives with her partner and spends a lot of free time exploring the outdoors with their pup Noomi. She loves to travel, hike, read, and try new foods/wine. Like most people in family medicine, she has many passions. In addition to reproductive health, she also has a strong interest in immigrant justice and global health, as well as mental health/addiction. 

Mayra Hernandez Schulte (she/her) is a Latinx Family Medicine physician from Southern California. She graduated from White Memorial Family Medicine Residency program in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles. She is interested in hiking, reading, watching TV/movies. She is completing fellowship in New York.

Monica Agarwal (she/her) grew up in NJ and completed her undergraduate and medical education on the east coast. Her medical school attendings inspired her to pursue women’s health through family medicine. She gained extensive experience in women’s health and family planning during her residency and decided to pursue fellowship in NJ to bolster her procedural skills. After fellowship, she is interested in providing abortion care and complex contraception in provider-shortage areas. She is passionate about the integration of women’s health into primary care, as well as teaching and advocacy. Outside of medicine, she enjoys comedy and documentaries, experimenting with ingredients in the kitchen, accruing houseplants, and traveling internationally. 

Sheila Attaie (she/her) is an Iranian-American family physician who grew up around Sacramento, CA. She finished a Family & Community Medicine residency at UC Davis. Before that, she spent a chunk of time in Los Angeles for college, an AmeriCorps service year, and medical school. Outside of medicine, she fills her cup with snowboarding, hiking, paddle boarding, dancing, breweries, and international travel! She is incredibly excited to be joining the RHAP team as the Washington fellow!  

Interested in becoming a Reproductive Health Care and Advocacy Fellow? Applications are accepted on a rolling basis. The deadline to apply for the 2022-2023 cohort is December 1, 2021.

 

How RHAP Translates Its Resources

At RHAP we take pride in our resources. Each resource goes through a careful process before we upload them onto our website. We wanted to guide you through what the process looks like when we’re updating our resources into other languages. Currently, RHAP is focusing on translating our resources into Spanish, Hindi, Chinese Simplified, and Chinese Traditional.

Step One: Determining Which Languages and Which Resources

To figure this out, RHAP used data from the U.S. Census and Google Analytics. With the U.S. Census data, we reviewed the languages most spoken throughout the U.S., the languages growing in popularity, and those that were decreasing. From our Google Analytics data, we found that Hindi and Spanish were among the most common languages used to access our site.

Unfortunately, we aren’t able to translate the entirety of our resource library, so we had to decide which resources to focus on. So, we decided to prioritize a) resources that people could use to “self-manage” their reproductive health and b) our most popular resources, as shown by Google Analytics.

Step Two: Translating

We work with professional translators to translate our materials into Spanish, Hindi, Chinese Simplified, and Chinese Traditional.

Step Three: Field Testing

We field-test each resource that is being translated for the first time. Recently, you might have noticed our call for field testers in previous social media postings, emails, newsletters, etc. Through this call-out, we gathered an amazing group of field testers that have done an incredible job looking through newly translated resources and making sure the translations 1) accurately convey information in a way that is easy to understand and culturally appropriate, and 2) reflect RHAP’s values of evidence-based practice, intersectionality, patient-centeredness, and purposeful inclusion. Each resource has 2-3 Field Testers, who are a mix of clinicians and non-clinicians, that read over a document with the English version on one side and the translated version on the other. Our field testers make corrections and provide notes and feedback that we relay back to the professional translators. All field testers receive a $100 honorarium as gratitude for their time and work.

Step Four: Polishing Touches

The final few steps include waiting for the professional to integrate field testers’ feedback and return final versions of our newly translated resources. From there, we take another quick look to make sure everything is okay, and then upload the newly completed resources onto our website.

The results make the work of translating each resource worth it! We love to see how our resources are being used to help educate and support our communities! Thank you to everyone who has been helping us and to everyone who uses our resources. Reach out to our Program Coordinator, Brandy Bautista, at brandy@reproductiveaccess.org if you’re interested in being a field tester for our Spanish, Hindi, and/or Chinese resources. Now onto the next resource!