Abstract
Objectives: Medicaid-enrollees face barriers to family planning services in the post-partum period, impacting reproductive health outcomes. Institutional policies prohibiting contraception in Catholic hospitals are a significant barrier. We sought to measure the relationship between delivery at a Catholic hospital and risk of short interval pregnancy in the Medicaid population in Illinois.
Highlights
Tara Health Foundation and Community Catalyst partnered with Clarify Health, a Silicon Valley “big data” firm with longitudinal data across 300 million lives from government and commercial data sets
We chose 12 states (CA, CO, FL, IL, LA, MI, MO, NY, OH, PA, TX and WI) that have a strong presence of Catholic hospitals, represent regional diversity and for which Clarify had strong data coverage
Rates of providing contraception during the immediate post-partum period were significantly lower at Catholic hospitals, especially in five states, as were rates of providing emergency contraception to rape victims
Summary
Gender norms and stereotyping contribute to religiously based stigma and decrease access to sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services. We explored religious leaders’ beliefs and perceptions to inform a faith based SRH stigma intervention. We conducted semi-structured in-depth interviews on attitudes and experiences with SRH counseling, strategies, needs, and best practices for faith based SRH interventions. Results: Religious leaders described little training and experience in counseling youth on sex. Some leaders underscored “sexual stigma”, “silence”, and “fear” as barriers to openness and age-appropriate conversations about sex and discussed needs for comprehensive sexual education and improved contraception access for all youth. Conclusions: Interviews emphasize the need for SRH training among faith leaders to reduce stigma around adolescent sex and they underscore that training must address gender stereotyping and norms
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