Kathryn Crofton received her MD from the University of Rochester School of Medicine and is currently a second-year obstetrics and gynecology resident at Albany Medical Center in upstate New York. Her research interests include medical education and improving patient experience and access to reproductive healthcare. Her proposed project is the development of an educational video ...Read more >

Rylee Beltran is a current student in the department of Community and Behavioral Health at the University of Iowa College of Public Health. At the College of Public Health, she is a Maternal and Child Health Scholar in a 5-year Undergraduate-to-Graduate program. Rylee received a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology with honors from Grinnell College ...Read more >

Elizabeth M. Anderson (she/hers) is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at Indiana University Bloomington and a NICHD Predoctoral Fellow. She holds master’s degrees in sociology and applied statistics. As a medical sociologist, she uses mixed methods to investigate how social and institutional forces shape both the provision and utilization of health services, ...Read more >

Access to contraception is a fundamental human right, but incomplete knowledge and counseling around contraceptive methods, specifically side effects, can impede informed decision-making and contribute to adverse health outcomes. Traditional contraceptive counseling often fails to meet people’s needs, leading them to seek information from alternative sources such as the internet and social networking sites (SNSs) ...Read more >

Contraception is essential to reproductive health because it allows individuals to plan their families and maintain bodily autonomy. However, historically, Black, Brown, and other marginalized people have been subjected to racist and unethical origins of gynecology practices, which underlie contemporary disparities in reproductive health care in the US and the mistrust between medical providers and ...Read more >

Using contraception is the most effective way to prevent pregnancy when engaging in sexual intercourse, but people struggle to use it because they understand that every single act of intercourse without contraception may not lead to pregnancy and dissatisfaction with side effects can lead to stopping effective prescription methods. Research shows that risk preferences and ...Read more >

This research aims to investigate the impact of social networks on the decision-making process of women who discontinue intrauterine devices (IUDs) due to changes in bleeding and cramping. Although IUDs are highly effective and offered to all individuals of reproductive age, side effects can lead to discontinuation. The study addresses the gap in research by ...Read more >

To meet the contraceptive needs of adolescents and provide patient-centered care, providers and clinics need to understand the factors that influence their contraceptive decision-making. Contraceptive side effects can play an important role in contraceptive satisfaction and use, particularly among adolescents. However, there is little research exploring adolescent responses to experiencing side effects. The proposed study ...Read more >

Greater understanding of side effects is an important mechanism for achieving good client experience and alignment of contraceptive function for reproductive goals. While contraceptive side effects are important determining factors in contraceptive satisfaction and continuation, the notion of side effects as unidimensional or binary (present/absent) is too crude to explain current data and user reality. ...Read more >

Current paradigms for contraceptive care and counseling are limited, or even harmful, in how they serve people experiencing side effects. Despite evidence that people seek to balance method effectiveness with few side effects, many describe feeling dismissed or discouraged when seeking follow-up care. Further, health care systems have yet to put concerted effort into building ...Read more >