Written by Dr. Linda Prine and Dr. Ruth Lesnewski for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

In one of the clinics where we work, a 16-year-old girl came in with a sprained ankle.  She left with a prescription for birth control.

This turn of events is not as surprising as it seems:  As family physicians, we treat the whole person.  A quick update revealed that our 16-year-old patient had recently begun to have unprotected sex — and had no plan to get birth control. One of the reasons we love practicing family medicine is that we get to know our patients over time and provide the preventive care they need at every possible opportunity.

That is why we are dismayed that the Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) has proposed changes to the guidelines for family medicine residency programs removing the requirement that residents learn to provide contraception. These changes will go into effect in 2014 unless the ACGME is convinced otherwise, during an open comment period taking place this week.

A majority of U.S. women get their basic health care from a family physician or other primary care provider, and often that includes reproductive health care. Especially in rural and low-income areas, family physicians do it all! They not only provide birth control but also provide prenatal care, deliver babies, manage miscarriages, counsel patients about unintended pregnancies, and, increasingly, offer pregnancy termination so that their patients do not have to travel long distances and see unfamiliar doctors for these services.

ACGME’s motivations are legitimate:  It seeks to simplify the rules for the nation’s family medicine residency programs — numbering over 450 — and to allow for more creativity and flexibility. In some areas of practice, this makes sense. Many programs will continue to teach contraception; it will depend on the culture of the institution. However, residency programs based in religiously-affiliated hospitals (which operate nearly 20 percent of inpatient community-hospital beds in the U.S.), will most likely drop birth control training immediately.

Because the ACGME currently requires birth control training, religiously-affiliated institutions must figure out a way to comply. Many rotate their residents through external clinics to learn these skills — which are essential since 99 percent of women in the United States who have ever had sexual intercourse have used a method of contraception other than natural family planning at some point in their lives. Without this requirement, residents in religiously-affiliated programs may get no training at all in contraception.

Just last week, we attended a meeting where an assistant residency director expressed satisfaction at the prospect of no longer needing to teach residents how to counsel patients with unintended pregnancies of all of their options. This is our concern: Limiting the training of family medicine residents in birth control will have a disproportionate impact on the millions of low-income and rural women and teens who rely on their family doctors to provide the full-spectrum of reproductive health care. The Affordable Care Act greatly expands access to contraception for millions of women in the United States. But, if clinicians aren’t trained in providing contraception, then that access is meaningless, even if it is covered. We need to make sure all clinicians who provide primary health care for women are trained to provide high-quality contraceptive care.

Our next generation of family physicians must learn and practice more contraception, not less. Otherwise our shamefully high rate of unintended pregnancy (the highest in the developed world) will rise further.

There is time to make a difference. The ACGME is accepting comments on the proposed guidelines until April 25, 2013. Click here to download our suggested version of the official comment form.  Fill in your information and email it to familymedicine@acgme.org.  The Reproductive Health Access Project has an online campaign for all of us to tell the ACGME that their changes affect our health care.

Written by Kathy Bougher for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

The women of El Salvador are denied life-saving access to abortion.

Beatriz wants to live. A 22-year-old Salvadoran from a poor, rural community, Beatriz (a pseudonym to protect privacy) suffers from chronic and severe medical conditions. She is the mother of an infant. And she is roughly 18 weeks pregnant with an anencephalic fetus, a fetus without a brain. Doctors at the Maternity Hospital determined that the pregnancy is life-threatening, and Beatriz requested that Salvadoran medical personnel perform an abortion, but a 1998 law in El Salvador prohibits all abortions, without exception.

The Salvadoran feminist organization Agrupación Ciudadana por la Despenalización del Aborto Terapéutico, Ético y Eugénesico (Citizen Group for the Decriminalization of Therapeutic, Ethical and Eugenic Abortion), which has been working to decriminalize abortion in the country since 2009, petitioned the Salvadoran Supreme Court on April 15 to intervene and to direct medical personnel to provide without fear of criminal prosecution the procedures Beatriz needs to save her life. Under current law, both Beatriz and any medical personnel involved in an abortion would face criminal charges and prison time. The court responded with a temporary directive that medical personnel provide the care necessary to guarantee her life and health while they make a decision regarding the petition for an abortion. Medical personnel were also directed to present to the court within five days a report on the condition of the mother and the fetus to inform their deliberations.

Within the past few days Amnesty International has initiated a petition asking for life-saving medical care, including an abortion; the United Nations has spoken; and the Salvadoran Minister of Health, Dr. Maria Isabel Rodriguez, has requested that the Supreme Court approve the request. Dr. Rodriguez emphasized that Beatriz’s kidney function continues to deteriorate as the pregnancy advances, and that the public health system is ready to perform an abortion. The Salvadoran Attorney General for Human Rights also supports the request.

At a press conference the Agrupación convened in San Salvador on April 18, Esther Major, an Amnesty International representative in El Salvador, characterized the way Beatriz is being treated as “nothing less than cruel and inhuman.”

“While we are talking, while the Court is thinking and the government is delaying, Beatriz is suffering. … The Salvadoran government has clear obligations, international as well as domestic, to protect Beatriz’s life, and to assure that Beatriz can access vital treatment as soon as possible.”

Legal reforms in 1998 in El Salvador, promulgated by conservative religious forces, outlawed  abortion without exception. Previously it was permitted if the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest, the mother’s life was in danger, or the fetus was not viable. In addition, a constitutional amendment was added declaring that life begins at conception, which means that prosecutors can charge women who seek abortions with aggravated homicide, punishable by 30 to 50 years in prison, rather than the lesser crime of abortion, which carries a term of two to eight years.

Threats of prosecution and prison terms are not to be taken lightly under the 1998 law. The Agrupación has mounted legal and educational campaigns to secure the release of six women from prison. Since no comprehensive data exist in the country, the Agrupación is conducting its own research, which reveals that currently at least 24 women are serving prison terms of up to 40 years for abortion or aggravated homicide related to abortion charges.

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Written by Eleanor J. Bader for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

Plan B emergency contraception is available 24 hours a day via public vending machine at one college, much to consternation of anti-choice advocates.

A little more than a year ago, during the same week that the Susan G. Komen Foundation  announced that it would no longer provide funds to Planned Parenthood, Shippensburg University, a previously little-known state college in Pennsylvania’s Cumberland Valley, captured media attention throughout the United States. The sudden spotlight on Shippensburg came as a result of a decision administrators had made five semesters earlier — at the end of the fall 2009 term — to sell Plan B Emergency Contraception (EC) from a vending machine located in a remote corner of the campus.

According to Dr. Peter M. Gigliotti, Executive Director for University Communications and Marketing at Shippensburg, roughly 300 students a year had swiped their college IDs to obtain access to the machine in the two-and-a-half years it had been operating. Each was given an opportunity to confer with a counselor in person or by phone before inserting $25 to obtain Levonorgestrel, AKA Plan B, a medication that prevents fertilization, preventing pregnancy if taken with 72 hours of unprotected intercourse.

Gigliotti believes that someone on campus — he does not know if it was a disgruntled student, faculty member, or staff person — tipped off the press that Shippensburg had a Plan B vending machine and within hours the story was garnering headlines and energizing anti-choice and abstinence-only advocates across the country. “What we did by making Plan B available in a vending machine is very emotional for a lot of people,” he begins. “When the story broke we immediately received more than 1000 calls and emails. Right away it became clear to us that people were confused about what Plan B is and how it works. The largest number of contacts came from people who oppose Plan B on a moral or religious basis and they did not want to listen to facts. In their minds Plan B is an abortion and no amount of scientific information will change their minds. They told us that we were killing babies and were all going to go to Hell.”

In addition, impassioned callers berated college administrators, arguing that they were kowtowing to the demands of a misinformed student body, 85 percent of whom had previously indicated — through a 2008 student survey — that they wanted on-campus access to the drug. “My ‘favorite’ email asked us if we would give dynamite to our students if 85 percent of them wanted it,” he laughs. “It was absurd. What they failed to recognize is that Plan B is legal and available in most pharmacies, without a prescription, to anyone who is over the age of 17.”

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Written by Anna Forbes for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

Why did a study show women had difficulty using a new HIV prevention drug?

At the 20th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) in Atlanta this week, researchers reported that, in a large scale trial among African women, neither oral Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) nor the daily use of vaginal gel containing an anti-retroviral (ARV) drug had shown effectiveness in reducing HIV risk.

The clinical trial, Vaginal and Oral Interventions to Control the Epidemic (VOICE), enrolled 5,029 HIV-negative women and randomized them into five study arms. In one group, women were asked to take an oral tenofovir (an ARV tablet) daily. In a second arm, women tested the daily use of oral TDF/FTC (a two-ARV combination called Truvada), and in the third, women were asked to insert a vaginal gel containing 1 percent tenofovir gel that had been shown in a previous study to provide moderate protection against HIV.

The fourth and fifth arms were placebo controlled; women received either a pill or a gel that looked identical to the study products but contained no active ingredients. Comparing the rate of new HIV infections occurring among women in the control arms with those of women in the various intervention arms allowed the researchers to see if the use of the interventions reduced women’s rate of HIV acquisition. Participants in all arms were also regularly provided with free condoms, counseling about the need to use condoms consistently, and testing and treatment for sexually-transmitted infections (STIs) to reduce their HIV risk to the greatest extent possible.

Despite the fact that other trials of oral PrEP have shown some effectiveness in women, none of the VOICE interventions resulted in decreased HIV acquisition rates. Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, co-principle investigator for the VOICE study, reported in her presentation at CROI that it appears relatively few participants in intervention arms of the trial actually used the products daily as instructed. By testing blood samples for the presence of the ARVs in the body, the researchers saw that only 25 to 30 percent of the women were using the products as instructed. A similar lack of adherence to daily product use also led to discontinuation of the FEM-PrEP trial in 2011.

The VOICE results are particularly frustrating and sad because of the high rates of new HIV infection that occurred among women in the trial. Even with the benefits of medical care, free condoms, condom counseling, and more, the rates were high — 6.3 percent among women in the oral tenofovir arm, 4.2 percent in the placebo oral arm, 4.7 percent in the Truvada arm, 5.9 percent in the tenofovir gel arm, and 6.8 percent in the placebo gel arm. The researchers reported that the greatest number of new infections occurred among women who were under the age of 25 and unmarried. The rate of women becoming HIV positive was less (although still high) among women who were over the age of 25, married, and/or who had partners over the age of 28. This pattern is prevalent globally. Even in the United States, younger women are at greater risk of HIV than their older cohorts.

This is also frustrating because we know that PrEP works when people use it. Data demonstrating this led to the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of Truvada for HIV prevention in the United States last year. In a 2010 study called iPrEx, Truvada reduced HIV risk among men and transgender women who have sex with men by 44 percent. Data from this study suggested that participants who took the drug strictly according to schedule and did not miss doses were up to 73 percent less likely to become infected. Adherence is a challenge across the board, however. About 50 percent of iPrEx participants were estimated to be adherent to the study protocol.

Other studies enrolling both women and men have also produced encouraging effectiveness data. In Partners PrEP, a study enrolling couples in which one partners was HIV-positive and the other was HIV-negative, effectiveness was shown to be 75 percent and adherence was estimated at 80 percent. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) TDF trial also showed adherence of about 80 percent, and the HIV risk of participants using the product was lowered by 63 percent.

So why is it that the two studies conducted exclusively among women did not yield evidence of effectiveness, when other studies enrolling both women and men did? What are the barriers to adherence that result in women finding themselves unwilling or unable to use this intervention daily? No answers to these questions are immediately apparent, although both the VOICE and the FEM-PrEP data are being further analyzed to look for clues.

If PrEP works for women (and men) when they use it, then why don’t women use it? Finding these answers will likely require additional research into the structural and cultural factors that shape behavior, perceptions of risk, and decision-making about sexual and health issues.

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Written by Bridgette Dunlap for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

One family's medical tragedy became a public battle thanks to anti-abortion activists.

Anti-choice activist Jill Stanek recently published online the name and photo of a woman who passed away following a late abortion at the Maryland clinic of Dr. Leroy Carhart. The name and picture of the woman, I’ll call her Marie, along with information about her job, marriage, and pregnancy were soon all over the internet. Protesters plastered Marie’s picture on signs and marched outside Dr. Carhart’s clinic and held a “vigil” outside the emergency room where she was treated. Internet commentators characterized Marie’s husband, parents, and sister, who traveled with her from out-of-state for the three-day procedure, as everything from bad Catholics to killers. Beyond being immoral, unethical and unbelievably cruel, making the family’s tragedy public without their consent was likely illegal.

The Information Released

Stanek first revealed Marie’s identity in a post entitled “BREAKING: Carhart’s Victims Identified,” which continues to top Stanek’s list of most read posts. In the post, she explains that clinic protestors, “sidewalk counselors” as she calls them, tracked the visits of Marie and her family members, making “real-time annotations” about how she looked and when the family came and went. Stanek gives us down to the minute details. (“The family returned again on Wednesday,[...]staying nine hours, an extraordinary length of time. They left at 4:35 p.m.”)[1]

Stanek’s scoop also included information about what time Marie was admitted to the emergency room, how many times she “coded,” what time she died, when Dr. Carhart called the hospital, how long a medical examiner looked at Marie’s file, etc. If Stanek’s information is accurate, it would seem to have been disclosed by someone working at the hospital — in violation of HIPAA, the federal law protecting patient privacy.  Stanek says she received Marie’s name from an “impeccable informant.” This is presumably the same source who knew what happened at the hospital, though it could have been a protestor who took it upon herself to search obituaries for women who looked familiar, or someone else. Once Marie’s name was known, her obituary was found. Two protestors confirmed to Stanek that the woman pictured in it had been at the clinic.

For extra journalistic cred, Stanek links to Marie’s baby registry. It was then taken down, presumably by someone who doesn’t want strangers looking at it and has access to the account. One likely candidate would be the other half of the registered couple, Marie’s grieving husband, who I’ll call Kevin. Undeterred, Stanek posts an “UPDATE” with a screenshot of the registry. Stanek’s later posts include a picture of Marie with Kevin mostly cropped out, which she likely pulled from Pinterest since the four versions of it Stanek has saved online include Marie’s Pinterest username in the file names.

Stanek’s scoop is a big deal among anti-choicer bloggers and Twitter users who can now illustrate their claims that Dr. Carhart is a murderer with pictures of an extremely pretty young woman and the warning of a family’s very sad and very public story. They can use Marie’s name and the name the couple had chosen for their daughter as a rallying cry and Twitter hashtag. Lila Rose took advantage of the opportunity to go on Fox News.

Marie’s mother-in-law expressed to a reporter how upsetting the publicity has been and pleaded for her son to be allowed to mourn in peace. Instead, strangers are tweeting pictures of him with his dead wife, photographing him leaving her funeral, making accusations about their decisions, and “remembering” a woman he just lost and they never met.

Anti-choice bloggers have been critical, to put it nicely, of those who have written about the invasion of privacy. Some have pointed to the publicity surrounding the death of Savita Halappanavar, who died after being denied an abortion in Ireland, as justification for publishing Marie’s information. However, it was Savita Halappanavar’s family who brought her story to light, not a stranger who learned what happened through likely illegal means. Halappanavar’s husband demanded an investigation into her death and her parents want a reformed abortion law to be named after her.They have chosen to make their loss a catalyst for change. We have no information that Marie’s family believes she received poor medical care, but they were free to make her story public for that or any other reason. It should have been their decision to make.

Invasion of Privacy Claims

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"Conversation" by Smile My Day on flickr

Written by Amanda Marcotte for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

One thing guaranteed about presidential election season is that any issue that a major candidate chooses to raise, no matter how obscure beforehand, can suddenly rise to an issue of national importance.  Thus it has been with the HPV vaccine.  Ever since it’s come out, those of us in the trenches on reproductive health care have been trying to raise the alarm about right-wing opposition to the vaccine, which prevents transmission of harmful forms of Human Papilomavirus (HPV), thereby also preventing the possible development of genital warts and of cervical cancer, and all the various and unpleasant treatments women have to endure to make sure they don’t get cervical cancer, such as coloscopies  and LEEP procedures.  But because it prevents a disease you get through sexual contact, many on the Christian right oppose the vaccination.  They tend to mindlessly support anything—even deadly cancers—that can be perceived as divine justice for the very human act of having sex.

Before Michele Bachmann started yapping on national TV about the vaccine and claiming that it makes girls “retarded”, pervasive right wing opposition to the vaccine wasn’t deemed worthy of much mainstream media attention.  I suspect that it was seen as a fringe phenomenon, like the belief that fluoride in the drinking water is a mind control agent. In one sense, it is a fringe belief—there’s consensus amongst experts that this vaccine is a good thing.  But because the experts believe something doesn’t mean that nutty opinions in the public at large can’t have widespread negative effects.  Whisper campaigns against the HPV vaccines are a perfect example. Only a third of girls are getting all three shots, for instance.  Part of the problem is that it’s a hassle to get three shots, and part of the problem is that it’s expensive.  But the research has shown that as income levels rose past a certain point, vaccination rates declined slightly.  This probably reflects the fact that people on the somewhat wealthier end of the spectrum are more likely to be conservative, and therefore more likely to think it’s appropriate to use the fear of disease and death to control female sexuality. Read the rest of this entry →

Written by Marcy Darnovsky for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

Originally published by the Center for Genetics & Society. Published here with permission of the author.

To its credit, the fertility industry’s professional organization – the American Society of Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) – has said plainly that freezing women’s eggs remains an experimental procedure that should not be “marketed or offered as a means to defer reproductive aging.” To its discredit, ASRM does little to see that even its own members adhere to its conclusion. (If this sounds familiar, you may be thinking of the similar disregard in which fertility clinics hold ASRM guidelines on the number of embryos they should put in women’s wombs, and on the use of embryo screening for sex selection.)

In fact, hundreds of American fertility clinics now offer “social egg freezing,” and there are thousands of online ads promising women they can “extend their fertility” by putting their eggs on ice. This disjuncture is examined in an article in this week’s Nature titled “Growth of egg freezing blurs ‘experimental’ label” [registration required].

Science writer Alison Motluk points out that chemicals used in the freezing process are toxic to embryos, though no one knows how much the eggs absorb; that there have been no systematic follow-up studies either of children born from frozen eggs (fewer than 2000 worldwide) or of success rates, especially for women in their late thirties who are the primary users; and that the procedure is very expensive. She notes that several other widely used assisted reproduction techniques, including pre-implantation genetic diagnosis and injecting sperm directly into eggs, were also rushed from lab to patients with next to nothing in the way of animal studies or clinical trials.

Ironically, proponents of social egg freezing offer this record of untested techniques as an argument in favor of removing the procedure’s experimental label. Though the commercial throttle is already wide open, these promoters are probably right in thinking that ASRM’s designation dissuades some women, dampening the growth of what is clearly a lucrative new market for the fertility industry. In an April article in Vogue, fertility doctor Geoffrey Sher, an active and early proponent of egg freezing, says that there “is already the potential for eight times the demand for egg freezing as there is for IVF procedures, just based on population numbers.” Sher and others believe that women should be encouraged to undergo the procedure in their late 20s or early 30s, when their eggs are higher quality.

Though the tone of the recent Nature article is more sober than that of many media accounts, neither it nor the other media stories published over the past several months – the Vogue piece, coverage by National Public Radio, and a first-person account on Huffington Post – even mention the non-trivial short-term risks (side effects ranging from mild to – rarely – life-threatening, with plenty of debilitating territory in between) and still uncertain long-term risks of egg retrieval for women.

In most of the media coverage, the take-away message is that egg freezing is an unproblematic boon. NPR’s article, for example, carries the conclusive title, “Egg Freezing Puts The Biological Clock On Hold” and reports that fertility doctors “envision a time when society considers freezing eggs an act not of desperation but of empowerment.” The Vogue piece declares, “Stopping the biological clock through egg freezing has long been the ultimate feminist fantasy.”

There have indeed been, and probably still are, some feminists who fantasize thus. The most notorious is Shulamith Firestone, who back in 1970 envisioned gender equality enabled by artificial wombs. Myself, I’ll forgo the fantasy techno-fixes. Give me the kind of feminism that assesses the real-world effects of a practice like egg freezing – as do, for example, Our Bodies Ourselves and the National Women’s Health Network.

Written by Bianca I. Laureano for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

There’s an abundance of conversations about Human Papillomavirus (HPV), especially since the new vaccinations have been approved by the FDA, and now include boys. However, what are people doing about promoting awareness and prevention about HPV (human papillomavirus), not only for young people, but older adults and men? I asked Patti Murillo-Casa, the NY Chapter President of Tamika & Friends, Inc. (T&F) a national non-profit organization dedicated to ending cervical cancer through HPV education. I admit that I was one of the founding members of T&F when living in Washington, DC and helped to build some of the early HPV education and prevention activities and discussing sexual health and sexuality specific to HPV and cervical cancer. Since my departure, T&F has expanded and grown in ways that are exciting and very much needed!

Patti Murillo-Casa has been a guest speaker for many of my classes where she shares her experience being diagnosed with cervical cancer 3 years ago, her healing, recovery, and her coping practices. She also shares information about HPV to help raise awareness. I’ve interviewed Patti before when asking her about the rates of divorce among couples where one experiences cervical cancer.  After her most recent visit as a guest speaker, I asked if she would be willing to provide an interview with me to help raise awareness of the work T&F is doing, how folks can create a chapter in their area, and how area folks can get involved in their reproductive justice efforts locally.

Can you share with us how you became involved with Tamika & Friends, Inc.?

Sure!!–.  Three months after my last treatment [for cervical cancer] had ended, and feeling the repercussions of the aftermath of a battle, my brother, Rudy, for whatever reason was checking the internet and found Tamika and Friends NYC Walk to Beat the Clock, a 5K prevention and awareness walk to prevent cervical cancer.  The walk was going to be taken place in 3 days from the day he told me.  He insisted so much for us to do it that I gave in.  We gathered family, friends, raised some money and named our team “Tumor Terminators” and on Saturday, September 19, 2009 we were there.  For me it was like an epiphany when I saw the other survivors, women fighting the battle, caregivers and their friends all telling their stories with so much strength and determination.   It was easy to get inspired.  These women inspired me and continue to every day.  They welcomed me and hugged me as a sister; I was their survivor sister. They knew exactly what I had gone through.  I went to Tamika Felder, the founder and CEO of T&F, and I told her right there and then that I wanted to join the movement.  I wanted to be one of her “Friends.”  I was not feeling sorry for myself anymore.  I understood then, that the second chance I had just been given was to help other women not to endure what I had.  Tamika and Friends-NYC Chapter was born January 15, 2010.

What have been some of your most rewarding experiences since working with Tamika & Friends, Inc.?

They have been many, but meeting awesome people in this community tops my list.  I have met amazing warriors, advocates, and just people with tremendous heart and passion.  I have my ups and downs too, but I try to focus on the ups.  I always remember the first girl that came up to me and told me that because she heard or read my story she went to her doctor to check herself and that she will promise to do it every year.  In my book that’s what makes it all worthwhile and rewarding.  I call it my boost injection. :)  It allows me to continue with my mission, with my goal, with passion and determination to help eradicate cervical cancer.

What are some of the challenges you see existing in the work Tamika & Friends, Inc. has planned locally in NYC and nationally?

Tamika Felder calls this organization small, but very mighty.  We roll up our sleeves and we get ready to work at all times.  We are all volunteers and willing to do anything to spread the word and help survivors and people battling the disease.  As a national nonprofit, we rely on the generosity of our friends, neighbors and companies to help us. Unfortunately, in these economic times it’s hard, but we go forward with what we have and at the end of the day we have done what we can and we sleep better at night.  This is New York City, a city full of generous and eager people and if you want to help us you can email me at nycchapter@tamikaandfriends.org  or call 917-829-TFNY.

How do you see Tamika & Friends, Inc. work and the work you are doing as a example of reproductive justice?

We have several programs in place. Some of these are:

House Party of fiVe – A House Party of fiVe mixes girl talk with games teaching about HPV and how to stay safe in those intimate moments. The parties are fun, not lectures, and you can customize your party to fit your style! After experiencing this comfortable environment where women can ask questions more openly about their sexual health, many often pledge to visit their health-care provider to get their Pap and HPV tests along with taking back the literature provided and messages learned to share with their friends and family.

Wear Orange Day -In January, cervical cancer awareness month, we wear orange to bring more awareness to this preventable disease. While the color teal and white is the official color for cervical cancer, Tamika & Friends wears the color orange, a color that has been said to be healing and helps to balance your emotions in times of high stress.

Say Something - a toolkit provided and co-sponsored by another great organization, The Yellow Umbrella. Many times we want to know how to talk to our friends and family on cervical cancer, its link to HPV and how we can all prevent it. With the materials provided, it becomes easier to share information, educate yourself and help encourage women to get their HPV test.

Gift of Giving Financial Assistance Application -This is Tamika & Friends way of helping cervical cancer patients/survivors pay their bills. Unfortunately, the realities in this world do not stop even when you have a cervical cancer diagnosis and we love to be able to help ease the burden with donations provided by our supporters.

Walk to Beat the Clock – Our annual walks for cervical cancer. A place to provide solidarity, while recognizing and building a community of survivors, advocates, family and friends. The NYC Walk to Beat the Clock will on Saturday, September 17, 2011.  You can register, donate or volunteer by going to www.walktobeattheclock.org

T&F Chapters – Our organization is growing and as we share on our website we want to go global! We also attend many health fairs targeting different communities in Harlem, Spanish Harlem, Washington Heights and the South Bronx and we give information and bring awareness to this disease and prevention. We want to expand. We love being online, but we also know that education and help is often best offered in person. Tamika & Friends will work with you and others in your community to organize educational events such as those listed above. We will provide materials and expertise to help you hold informational sessions at your local library, attend health fairs, contact community health organizations and colleges/universities. Plus, we will help you connect women in need with medical and social support and assist in fundraising efforts.

Tamika & Friends is a great way to combine fun, friendship and making a difference. To get involved, or to request additional information, please contact Tanhea at tanhea@tamikaandfriends.org.

How do you include men in HPV education and why is their inclusion important?

I particularly love men in the audience when I do my presentations.  Most of the time they shy away from the subject until they find out the HPV affects men and women.  It is obvious, that they will not get cervical cancer but there are other cancers that men can get that are linked to HPV (i.e. penile, anal, throat).   I also remind them that there are women in their lives (mom. sister, aunt, grandmother, godmother, girlfriends) and they have to support them.  Knowledge is power for everyone.

I believe that the inclusion of men is very important because in a way this disease affects everyone.  Men also have to realized that the human papillomavirus affects them too and it can lead to genital warts, penile cancer and anal cancer, to name a few.   Recent studies have revealed that throat cancer is in the rise for men due to the human papillomavirus. It is also important that boys and young men 9-26 years old know that they are able to get the HPV vaccine.

What support services exist for cervical cancer survivors via Tamika & Friends, Inc.?

One of the services already mentioned is the Gift of Giving which helps cervical cancer patients/survivors pay their bills. We have a certified counselor on board if they want to talk, a gynecologist, and nurse; we also offer emotional support (online coming soon). Family support is awesome but to talk and be supported by someone that has gone through what you have gone through makes a difference. Tamika and Friends, Inc. can be the other family in a survivor’s life.

What else would you like to have readers know about Tamika & Friends, Inc.?

Believing that creative communication is far more infectious than HPV – we provide many hands-on ways to spread the word to women in all walks of life. We may be reached using social media and our website.

You can reach out to us by visiting our website: www.tamikaandfriends.org, on Facebook

and Twitter. You can read our blog We Can Prevent Cervical Cancer

"Telemedicine Cart" by Kevin Souza on flickr

Written by Wyndi Anderson and Melanie Zurek for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

Big pharma and advances in medicine get a lot of attention for improving health, but several recently published studies show that communication technology may actually drive some of the changes that could have the biggest impact.  Telemedicine is being safely and effectively used to expand access to a wide range of health care services including adult and neonatal intensive care, cardiology, psychiatry, and emergency medicine.

Advances in telemedicine, for example, are a growing part of the solution to the shortage of health care providers in rural communities and as a new study shows, for women seeking abortion. Rural communities are home to 20 percent of the U.S. population but only 9 percent of physicians; 87 percent of all U.S. counties and 97 percent of rural counties have no abortion provider. In light of these daunting statistics, telemedicine holds unprecedented promise of improved access and higher quality of care for hard-to-reach communities.

Alongside the promise of telemedicine comes the concerns that any new technology brings.  Not long ago, it was only in science fiction that we imagined robots would helps us care for critically sick babies or that we could trust technology enough to use it to monitor high risk pregnancy from far away.  As with any technology or use, we must proceed soberly and ethically, and consider acceptability, safety and quality of care alongside the benefits new technologies bring. But we also have to allow for evidence-based advances in medicine irrespective of ideology.

The recent publication of a new study finds medication abortion to be a safe and effective use of telemedicine.  The study, conducted by a multi-disciplinary team led by Dr. Daniel Grossman at Ibis Reproductive Health evaluated a program run by Planned Parenthood of the Heartland/Iowa to provide medication abortion using telemedicine at clinic sites not staffed by a physician.

The team’s findings, published in the August 2011 issue of Obstetrics and Gynecology, show that telemedicine provision of abortion is effective, is safe with a low complication rate that is on par with in-person provision, and is highly acceptable to patients.  This is good news for women seeking abortion, and good news for telemedicine – our hopes for which continue to appear well founded. Read the rest of this entry →