Health Equity Digest – May 2023: Access to Reproductive Care & Early Breast Cancer Screening
Welcome to a glimpse inside Real Chemistry’s Health Equity Digest, a monthly summary of relevant highlights and emerging trends in today’s complex, ever-evolving health equity space.
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Access to Reproductive Care
As we recognize the 63rd anniversary of the first FDA-approved birth control, access to reproductive care remains at risk in the U.S. Approximately two-thirds of Americans oppose laws that ban access to abortion medication. Despite this, a federal district judge in Texas ordered the suspension of the abortion medication pill, mifepristone, earlier this month. This would barre healthcare providers from prescribing it in states where abortion is legal. On Friday, April 21, the Supreme Court preserved access for now, while the case continues. This could have a major impact on low-income people and people of color, who are disproportionately impacted by lack of access to reproductive care and contraceptives.
According to the Guttmacher Institute:
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Among reproductive-age women who are ineligible for Medicaid because their state has refused to expand the program, nearly two-thirds are women of color.
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Black women living with low incomes are more likely than White women living with low incomes to report ever having been pressured by a clinician to use a contraceptive. Other studies have documented Latina and Black women’s experiences of race-based discrimination and pressure to use methods that do not align with their preferences during contraceptive counseling.
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Latina and Black women living with low incomes are more likely than middle-class White women to report both that healthcare professionals advised them to limit their childbearing and that healthcare professionals discouraged them from having children.
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Among women at risk for unintended pregnancy, Black women are less likely than White women to use any contraceptive method—and Latinas and Black women are less likely to use a highly or moderately effective contraceptive method.
Early Breast Cancer Screening
New study suggests Black women should be screened earlier for breast cancer: An international team of researchers wrote in a study published in JAMA Network Open that clinical trials may be warranted to investigate whether screening guidelines should recommend Black women start screening for breast cancer at younger ages, around 42 instead of 50.
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