A national survey of emergency physicians’ knowledge, attitudes, and practices surrounding pregnancy options counseling and abortion referrals
Abortion
Awarded 2022
Emerging Scholars in Family Planning
Miriam Singer, BA
Harvard Medical School
$7,500

Miriam Singer is a third-year student at Harvard Medical School (HMS). Her passions include reproductive justice, reproductive health, and medical education. She recently co-developed an innovative, interactive, case-based Reproductive Justice curriculum covering systems-level disparities in family planning. This curriculum is now mandatory for every HMS student and will soon be available to all educators and students (co-first author, MedEdPORTAL). In all of her professional work, even at this stage in my career, she is passionate about using writing as a platform for advocacy. Recently, she authored a Perspective piece advocating for the expansion of abortion care to specialties beyond Ob/Gyn (first-author, accepted to JAMA Internal Medicine). Every day throughout her career, Singer commits to living the ideals of the Society of Family Planning’s core mission: to leverage my medical expertise and privilege, my research development, and my deep passion for reproductive justice to advocate for the integration of abortion into all specialties. Her SFP Emerging Scholar project, which will also serve as her required original research thesis for her medical degree, explores a national cohort of emergency physicians regarding their knowledge, attitudes, and practices surrounding pregnancy options counseling, abortion referrals, and abortion provision. Abortion care in the US is in a state of crisis. Front-line emergency clinicians commonly diagnose pregnancy and thus have an opportunity—and responsibility—to protect access to timely, safe abortion. The results of this study will create foundational needs assessment knowledge to guide future research by this team regarding interventions to integrate abortion into our emergency rooms.