The overall goal of this mentor grant is to improve access to long-acting reversible contraception (LARC) by investigating ways to implement LARC at time frames other than the traditional family planning visit, while simultaneously training new independent clinician-researchers focused on family planning in the US, Malawi and Zambia. Dr. Stuart’s career objectives are to complete ...Read more >

Objective: Effective postpartum contraception helps space births and reduce unintended pregnancy. We explore predictors, including trust, of choosing effective postpartum contraception among a cohort of pregnant women. Methods: This prospective, observational study enrolled adult English-speaking pregnant women during prenatal care. We administered surveys at enrollment and prior to discharge. Our primary predictor was trust in ...Read more >

There is an urgent need for effective HIV prevention tools for African American (AA) women, a population disproportionately impacted by HIV/AIDS health disparities. Approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2012 for use by HIV-negative persons, pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is a promising biomedical prevention strategy that has the potential to reduce HIV incidence among ...Read more >

Recent years have seen a surge in legislation to restrict state level abortion access, often rationalized by lawmakers as protective to maternal and child health. Lack of abortion access may potentially have downstream infant health consequences, particularly for women who have to continue unwanted pregnancies to term and may experience increased psychological distress as well ...Read more >

Providing evidence-based care to patients has become an increasingly important part of medical practice, but this aim cannot be achieved without strong scientific research. Legal restrictions on certain types of family planning research may create obstacles to advancing knowledge that supports evidence-based patient care. Specifically, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will not fund “research ...Read more >

The purpose of this research and career development proposal is to provide Bliss Kaneshiro MD, MPH, with funding to mentor early-stage family planning investigators as they become established researchers who implement high quality projects that meet the Society of Family Planning (SFP) Research Priorities. I will mentor early-stage investigators in four projects that meet six ...Read more >

Removing barriers to LARC use has been lauded as an important strategy for reducing unintended pregnancy, yet there has been little attention to women’s experiences of LARC’s “reversibility,” a perceived advantage of LARC over sterilization and a key feature of the life cycle of LARC use. The scant research examining LARC removal indicates that women ...Read more >

Background: Women with a recent history of abortion are at high risk for unintended pregnancy and repeat abortion. Several barriers prevent these women from using more highly effective methods of contraception, such as long-acting reversible contraception (LARC), immediately post-abortion. The role of an individual’s trust in the health care system may be an important component ...Read more >

Objectives: The objective was to compare the outcomes of surgical evacuation procedures after cervical preparation with either osmotic dilators, or mifepristone followed by misoprostol. This was a non-inferiority design to evaluate whether pharmacologic preparation was significantly worse than osmotic/mechanical dilation. Methods: A randomized controlled trial of 50 women was performed, to compare pharmacologic cervical preparation ...Read more >

Background: The intrauterine device is a long-acting, highly effective, reversible contraceptive that may be underutilized due to fear of pain during insertion. To date, in clinical trials, misoprostol, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, paracervical block, and 1 mL of 2% lidocaine gel have been found to be ineffective. Methods: This is a randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind trial evaluating ...Read more >