See Aliza's poster here.
I was selected for a virtual poster presentation for the Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs 2023 Annual Conference. My poster was titled, “Barriers to Reproductive Health Care Prior to and During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” and stemmed from research I conducted during my summer practicum with Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health. This study was motivated by the significant disruptions to reproductive health services delivery during the COVID-19 pandemic. I utilized serial cross-sectional survey data from August 2017 and December 2021 to examine if the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the number and type of barriers to reproductive healthcare services experienced by US women of reproductive age.
The surveys were fielded to members of the market research group Ipsos’s KnowledgePanel. Our analytical sample was 12,351 individuals assigned female at birth who had ever tried accessing reproductive health services. We found that the percent of respondents who experienced any barrier to care in the past three years increased from 40.6% in 2017 to 44.6% in 2021. We also found that the number of people experiencing three or more barriers increased from 16.1% in 2017 to 18.6% in 2021. The mean number of barriers experienced increased from 1.09 in 2017 to 1.29 in 2021. Participants from historically marginalized populations – including those identifying as Hispanic, with no high school diploma or equivalent, who took the survey in Spanish, and living at <100% of the Federal Poverty Level – experienced the greatest increase in the mean number of barriers (p<0.05) between 2017 and 2021. Our research indicates that COVID-19 may have worsened barriers to reproductive health services for women living in the US, though such barriers existed prior to the pandemic and are thus likely to persist.
This opportunity provided me with substantial professional development. It was an incredibly rewarding experience to build out the poster myself and collaborate on edits with my co-authors. While I wish my schedule would have allowed me to present the poster in-person, presenting in the virtual setting was a great learning experience. For the presentation, I recorded a 5-minute overview of my poster that individuals could listen to when they “visited” my poster. This experience helped me practice brevity and clarity in the presentation of my findings, which is a skill I will surely use in my future career. Additionally, I was overjoyed to have a platform through which to share this important research. I am extremely grateful to the Center of Excellence for funding the cost of my presentation.