Background: In both legally restricted and less restricted settings in Mexico, women purchase misoprostol in community pharmacies without a prescription and use it at home. Because these abortions occur outside the health-care system, little is known about how women learn about misoprostol, assess their eligibility, know appropriate dosing regimens, and recognize complications. Identifying and assessing ...Read more >

Harvard Medical School is currently undergoing major curriculum reform, which provides a unique opportunity. Increased student exposure to abortion patients and science has the potential to improve understanding within the whole graduating medical school class, eventually increasing abortion sympathy of future physicians entering all medical specialties. This, in turn, may lead to expanded abortion provision ...Read more >

Though it is widely held that the restrictive policies regulating obtaining sterilization under Medicaid must be revised, no previous studies have proposed new process models. Our study addresses a critical gap in knowledge regarding Medicaid sterilization restrictions by developing a revised model of regulations grounded in the experiences of the very women impacted by current ...Read more >

Worldwide, concern about side effects and health risks is a key barrier to contraception use. Among women with an unmet contraceptive need in Latin America and the Caribbean, 35% reported contraception nonuse because of these concerns. These concerns often involve myths about contraception safety. Debunking these myths can be difficult as people have cognitive functions ...Read more >

As an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Ottawa, my research program is dedicated to conducting policy relevant and action- and intervention-oriented research on comprehensive reproductive health issues. My research includes multi-methods social science research and health policy analysis and I work at the local, provincial, national, and international ...Read more >

This Community-Based Participatory Research Grantsproject aims to expand access to reproductive health services, particularly for adolescents and young adults, in an underserved, primarily Native Hawaiian, rural community in Hawai‘i. Partners include the University of Hawai‘i Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Women’s Health, the Waianae Coast Comprehensive Health Center, and Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest ...Read more >

Objectives: Misoprostol-alone is an increasingly common method of induced abortion in countries such as Pakistan where abortion is legally restricted, but measurement poses significant challenges. The list experiment is a secret-answer technique that has been shown to more accurately measure sensitive behaviors like abortion compared to traditional face-to-face interviews. This study developed measures of misoprostol ...Read more >

Objective: To compare the effectiveness of two oral analgesic regimens in first trimester medical abortion. Methods: We randomly assigned 250 women undergoing first trimester abortion with mifepristone and misoprostol at three clinics to two ibuprofen regimens: therapeutic (800 mg every 4-6 hours as needed for pain), or prophylactic (800 mg starting 1 hour before the ...Read more >

Background: Women undergoing abortion are at high risk of poor contraceptive use and future unintended pregnancy. We sought to to investigate whether an informational phone call three weeks after having an abortion would improve contraceptive use six weeks after the procedure. Methods: This was a single-blinded, randomized controlled trial in women who chose a combined ...Read more >

Background: Over one quarter of reproductive-age women experience migraine, a condition disabling over 12 million American women annually. Hormonal contraception (HC), used by 20 million women, may cause or aggravate migraine, leading to contraceptive discontinuation. However, scientific evidence linking HC and migraine is poor. Objectives: To estimate incidence of headache due to hormonal contraception use ...Read more >