My professional career trajectory changed since completing my C0mplex Family Planning fellowship in 2016. I entered the subspecialty with a strong desire to pursue abortion and graduate medical education. I started a Ryan Residency Training Program and became an Associate Residency Program Director. However, as I changed institutions, my desire to pursue graduate medical education waned as I began to notice who we are as a community of providers and who our patients are. The reality I noticed earlier in my career was becoming stronger – in my first faculty position I was the only second trimester abortion provider of color across a health system and now I was the only one within a tertiary care academic referral center.

We can no longer be satisfied with “just” providing care. I would like to develop my body of work to investigate who we are as providers and how we can better serve our patients. Within this scope, examining if providers of color feel they shoulder a larger burden and need extra support, what patients’ preferences are in an abortion provider and examining quality metrics to help determine if racial and/or ethnic concordance of providers and patients has an impact on care. The body of research I propose has a potential impact on patient safety and developing more patient-centered approaches. Concordance of racial and/or ethnic background between patients and providers has been shown to improve some survival outcomes, and I would ultimately like to see if this is true of abortion care as well.