Shay Gingras is currently a student at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health pursuing her Masters in Public Health in Maternal and Child Health with minors in Sexual Health and Health Equity. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in International Studies and Sociology from Macalester College. She is currently a Senior Research Coordinator with Planned Parenthood North Central States’ (PPNCS) Research Division, based in Minneapolis, and coordinates studies on abortion care, contraception, STI prevention, and social science projects focused on increasing access to and quality of care for historically marginalized populations. Prior to this, she worked directly with patients as a call center representative for Whole Woman’s Health and as an abortion doula for patients receiving surgical abortion care at PPNCS.

Gingras is seeking to conduct a qualitative study of the experiences of individuals who receive asynchronous medication abortion care through Gynuity Health Project’s (GHP) Medication Abortion–Autonomous Self-Assessment Pilot (MA-ASAP) study. As the study coordinator for one of two study sites, she intends to interview participants who have enrolled in this study to collect qualitative data on experiences of asynchronous abortion care to complement the quantitative data collected by GHP. This will contribute to the body of literature that illustrates both the benefits and the challenges of expanding access to medication abortion through new delivery methods.