Dr. Sudhinaraset is an Assistant Professor in Community Health Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Her research focuses on the reproductive health equity of women, girls, and immigrant populations globally and in the US. Her vision is to bridge her two current areas of expertise: the (mis)treatment of women accessing reproductive health ...Read more >

In 2011, approximately 1.1 million abortions were performed in the US, and 333,964 of these abortions were performed at Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) affiliates. PPFA instated new restrictions on intravenous sedation eligibility during surgical abortion. As of March 2015, affiliates can no longer offer sedation to women with a BMI >45 and women ...Read more >

Objectives: This study explored the meaning of abortion work to providers, how providers experience and manage stigmatization of their work, and how these experiences and stigma management strategies differ across providers by clinic type, clinic, work role and individuals. Methods: Data were collected through qualitative observation of clinic settings, in-depth interviews with providers, and quantitative ...Read more >

Sexual and reproductive health (SRH), is an educational content domain at the intersection of health, illness, culture, ethics, and politics, and crucially important for patient care. It is widely recognized as affecting all aspects of health and well-being, and knowledge about it among providers, makes it a growing, but unmet, priority for the healthcare workforce. ...Read more >

Vietnam has one of the highest rates of abortion in the world. It also has a recent history of son preference, demonstrating a skewed sex ratio at birth (SRB) in the past decade. The SRB is especially skewed in northern Vietnam, and varies by socio-demographic characteristics and parity. The country has a total fertility rate ...Read more >

Reproductive health behaviors and outcomes are the product of complex decision-making processes with multiple levels of influence. While a considerable body of literature examines the proximate and ecological influences, few studies have examined the role of social norms and stigmas. Researchers generally agree that social norms specify how individuals should behave in specific situations, and ...Read more >

Objectives: We sought to compare the decision-making process between women with Medicaid and private insurance undergoing postpartum sterilization. To prevent involuntary sterilizations, regulations require that Medicaid-insured women wait 30 days between signing a consent form and undergoing this surgery. This waiting period has been associated with unfulfilled requests for postpartum sterilization procedures, and in turn, ...Read more >

Objectives: Recent research from Texas found that self-provided and non-clinical abortions are on the rise, largely due to abortion restrictions. Anecdotal evidence from other abortion advocates suggests that some people seek alternative abortion methods for other reasons. This is the first qualitative study with a geographically diverse North American sample to describe people’s preferences, motivations, ...Read more >

This primary historical research project examines the concept of “unintended pregnancy” in social and cultural context, seeking to explain how such an intimate concept as pregnancy planning became one of the major goals of late 20th and early 21st century US public health. Though women have actively planned and prevented pregnancy since at least the ...Read more >

The mentorship of medical students is vital to the future of family planning research, advocacy and training the next generation of abortion providers. Most previous publications have focused on a clinical family planning curriculum for medical students in their third and fourth years of medical school. In this mid-career mentorship project, I will focus on ...Read more >