Essential Access Health’s Post

This new interactive resource highlights key messages from an event exploring the effects of violence and harassment on the health and well-being of health care professionals working to provide essential #ReproductiveHealthcare: https://bit.ly/3VkzLrc

Breaking Barriers, Building Futures: In this powerful scene, a courageous woman takes a significant step towards autonomy with the help of a health service, changing her life story. This is where change begins – in the heart of communities. Witness the strength, hope, and resilience that access to reproductive health can bring. Let’s champion these life-changing moments together! #ChangeMakers #HealthForAll #EmpowermentInAction #GlobalGoals”

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has released a model attestation for covered entities and business associates regarding requests for protected health information (PHI) related to reproductive health care, which employers and their business associates should review and prepare to implement. Learn more: https://ow.ly/8xwm50SLrb4

There are many health studies on the effects of #AirPollution, this one deals in male reproductive issues. Read the research at https://t.ly/PZczn #climatechange

This new interactive resource highlights key messages from a webinar exploring the effects of violence and harassment on the health and well-being of health care professionals working to provide essential #ReproductiveHealth care in the U.S.: https://ow.ly/k3bZ50QQHg3 #ReproductiveRights #HealthEquity

With the fall of Roe v. Wade in June 2022, the reproductive health landscape changed in ways unimaginable a short time ago, when electronic health records became the norm. With increasing interoperability of medical records, reproductive health information is being shared widely and across state lines. This may put women seeking healthcare outside of their home state in a precarious position, risking their privacy, health and liberty. Read more on the blog: https://bit.ly/3UQoNJW #FamilyDocs #FamilyMedicine #FamilyPhysicians #PrimaryCare #FMDocs

#PublicHealth agencies prioritize health across all life stages, with a significant focus on reproductive and #FamilyHealth. Reproductive healthcare addresses physical, mental, and social well-being related to reproductive systems, fostering overall health. Federal, state, and territorial policies play a crucial role in shaping family and #ReproductiveHealth by: ➡️ Promoting contraceptive access ➡️ Addressing maternal morbidity and mortality ➡️ Supporting family-centered health policies such as enhanced dyadic care Read more about family and reproductive health in the 2024 Legislative Prospectus series: https://bit.ly/4aq8Dwd

So much about my first two weeks as a new graduate labor and delivery nurse has been challenging: from developing clinical skills, to learning the operations of the floor and hospital/unit policies, to information saturation and overload. I have been deeply disturbed, however, at the frequency that birthing moms have confided in me their experiences of #ObstetricViolence, and the impact of that trauma or anxiety in the labor and birth space. I have a strong and extensive background in social justice, holistic healing and wellness, and solid training and experience as an antiracist community-based doula. So I went into this job fully knowing that (a) the obstetric model is dominant in hospital based labor and delivery, and b) there will be many places and points where I will find myself at fierce odds with the obstetric approach to perinatal care. I knew that many of the problems with the #ObstetricModel stem from its roots in misogyny, dominance, and the gross nonconsensual experimentation on Black women's bodies, and still I have been dismayed to learn just how unfathomably common obstetric violence is today. (Really, this many women? Like maybe the majority??) Two weeks in and I've already heard many stories of fast, rough, or non-consensual cervical exams, of patients being bullied or fear-mongered by #obstetricians, of providers not listening when mama says "stop," of OBs essentially holding laboring women hostage to painful interventions such as aggressive up-titration of Pitocin, of nurses and doulas providing a line of defense against such violence in many cases and of nurses feeling powerless to interrupt it in others, and of clinicians' failures to properly educate pregnant women about their labor and birth rights or even what to expect through labor or induction. This is even more so for pregnant Women of Color and incarcerated women (who have to labor with Dep't of Corrections officers in the room, in some states while handcuffed to the bed). I'm re-calibrating my ideas and expectations for the emotional rollercoaster that will be required of me to be a labor and delivery nurse of good conscience in America...How can I earn the trust of laboring moms who have every right not to trust the system? How can I help them feel safe when we only get to know each other for such a short and vulnerable period of time? I'm so grateful to the Black moms, doulas, midwives, and doctors, who have been sounding the alarm and organizing tirelessly and so courageously for the dignity of mothers. I'm so grateful that I came across this post from Leslie Farrington MD that inspired me to articulate what has been haunting me these past two weeks. It’s obvious to me that Obstetric Violence is not a misnomer at all. The time for a complete shift in how we treat our pregnant and postpartum women should have been so long ago.

Until you have experienced #ObstetricViolence and #devaluation of your #humanity by medical staff in the perinatal period you really can’t say #OV is a misnomer. I would go even further and write that #obstetricsupremacy is a direct cause of the disrespect, dismissal, neglect, coercion, physical abuse and #birthtrauma that birthing individuals experience all too often. There’s plenty of research and papers and personal accounts. I wish the authors of this paper - and the editors - would read the latest by Wendy Post : https://lnkd.in/eyXwkruP Or the book by Dana Ain Davis, Reproductive InJustice https://lnkd.in/e5T7k422 In fact all who “care” for people on reproductive journeys need to be made aware of the lived experience of those whose dignity and autonomy have been denied in our “health” system. Maybe then we will see the transformation and accountability required for perinatal #patientsafety.

I just came back from a research conference at #WIN2024 where a group of us were talking about the complete lack of logical consistency in the opinion paper, "Obstetric violence is a misnomer". It is an opinion of the lowest form: lazy, one-sided, poorly supported, self-serving, and harmful to every birthing person in our maternity care system and around the world. It is also transparent in its offensive simplicity--we don't like having to confront the problem of obstetric violence, so we will spend our energy trying to sweep it back under the rug. That hiding place is where #obstetricviolence and #obstetricracism have always been embedded and normalized in the historical sexism, racism, and classism of birthing peoples' struggles for #respectfulmaternitycare. I partially self-funded the open access publication of this integrative review on obstetric violence in the U.S. and other high-income countries because of the importance of it being available to all academic, non-academic, and community activists who are working to end obstetric violence, uphold reproductive justice, and achieve birth equity: https://lnkd.in/gAcwzsr3