Assessing South Carolina Medicaid recipients’ experiences with the promotion of immediate postpartum insertion of LARCs
Contraception
Awarded 2016
Small Research Grants
Emily Mann, PhD
Medical University of South Carolina
$14,969

While access to family planning services, including highly effective contraceptive methods, has expanded significantly as a result of the Affordable Care Act, access to family planning services remains limited for certain populations, including new immigrants. This project seeks to examine the factors influencing Latino immigrants’ access to family planning services in South Carolina. The state is a newer destination for Latino immigrants and the population has grown by over 150% in the past decade; however, limited research exists on their reproductive health disparities. Researchers from PASOs, a community-based organization that helps the Latino community and service providers work together to promote the health and well-being of Latino families, and the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina will partner to conduct much-need research using community-based participatory research (CBPR) methodologies. Through interactive focus groups and individual interviews in three sites in South Carolina, this project aims to better understand community members’ preferences for and acceptability of different contraceptive methods, improve patient-provider communication, including contraceptive counseling, and use the research findings to guide ways of improving family planning services for Latino immigrants in South Carolina. The results of this project will be disseminated at the local and state level in order to highlight how to improve Latina/os’ access to family planning services through policy and programmatic change.