Maternal/Child Health DBQ3
Paris555
wk3dbq.docxInitial post: What hinders access to family planning and reproductive health services in Orlando, FL? Is one population more negatively impacted? Make sure to support your answer with examples and reputable resources.-1/2-1 page AMA format cite all sources
1. Peer Terlinde
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In Peoria County, Illinois, there are a few disparities and inequities that hinder family planning and reproductive health. One is lacking access to quality health care. There is a large population within the county that receive the medical card. The Peoria County school district has a population of 72.7% low-income students.1 Many clinics in the low-income neighborhoods are federally qualified health care centers, however are not operating under the guidelines of providing access to birth control. The health care providers are referring women to another clinic or Planned Parenthood for birth control. Are these women making it to another clinic? Do they have transportation? Two of the major clinics many of this population utilize are under OSF Health Care. OSF is faith based and therefore if a woman delivers at this hospital, she will not receive birth control or a tubal sterilization post-partum. Due to not receiving birth control after birth, some of these women end up pregnant within the first 3-6 months post-partum. One of the federally qualified health care centers recently lost its funding due to not providing proper access to jbirth control. UnityPoint Health Care has now taken it over and we will hopefully start to see a decline in unplanned pregnancies. HealthyPeople 2020 have a goal of increasing the number of post-partum women who take birth control or contraceptives.2
Another hindering factor is lack of evidence-based comprehension sex education in schools along with access to in-school health. The teen birth rate in Peoria County is 30.5 births per 1,000 teen girls in 2016. African American teens had a birth rate three times that of white teen girls. Peoria County also has a chlamydia incidence rate of 3,852 African American females per 100,000 individuals. The gonorrhea incidence rate is 1,838.6 African American females per 100,000 individuals. The lower-income zip codes of Peoria County have the highest rates for both chlamydia and gonorrhea. The data shows that African American females have the highest disparities for quality health care, teen pregnancy and STI’s.3
References:
1. Peoria, Il district 150. Illinois report card web site. http://webprod.isbe.net/ereportcard/publicsite/getReport.aspx?year=2017&code=480721500_e.pdf . Accessed May 18, 2018.
2. Maternal, infant, child health. MICH-16.6. The HealthyPeople 2020 website. https://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/topics-objectives/topic/maternal-infant-and-child-health/objectives . Updated May 18, 2018. Accessed May 18, 2018.
3. Peoria County sexually transmitted infection report 2017. The Peoria City/County Health Department web site. http://www.pcchd.org/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/159 . Published 2018. Accessed May 18, 2018.
2. Peer Bollin
Gender inequality
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The community I will discuss is the state of Tennessee. My initial thought was that Tennessee was hindered by its availability of resources and healthcare covers, but that does not seem to be the major hindrance. Tennessee has made great strides to address the issue of family planning(FP) and reproductive health services(RHS), especially in recent years. Several years ago, Tennessee implemented a family planning program that included building and providing funding for public family planning centers, which helped avert 27,100 unintended pregnancies in 2014.1 There are many sub-programs under the family planning program that provides low/no cost FP/RHS, including the Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Program. Insurance cost and coverage is likely a small hindrance as Tennessee ranks 45 among state health rankings and still has about 10% of its population with no form of insurance.2,3 Healthcare coverage is clearly and issue and most likely a contributing factor, however, I feel that gender equality is a larger issue impacting FP/RHS in Tennessee.
Gender equality has come a long way across the nation, but there are still gaps to be filled. In, Tennessee, women are more likely than men to live in poverty and less likely to be in the labor force.4 As a woman, the ability to feel confident and in control can impact many aspects of life including family planning. In 2015, Tennessee ranked on the low end of the nation for reproductive rights for women at 47, with African Americans being the most impacted.4 An article in BMC Public Health revealed a “significant positive association between gender inequality index and various childhood mortality rate.”5 Women who feel inadequate or seek acceptance are likely to feel that they must submit to male counter-parts or give in to pressure to please them, which often involves FP/RHS. Tennessee’s low rankings in women’s rights and gender equality compared to the nation paired with its low rankings in healthcare coverage reveal how access to family planning and reproductive health services may be hindered.
Resources
1. State Facts About Unintended Pregnancy: Tennessee. Guttmacher Institute. 2018. Available at: https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/state-facts-about-unintended-pregnancy-tennessee. Accessed May 17, 2018.
2. Tennessee. SHADAC. 2018. Available at: http://www.shadac.org/state/tn. Accessed May 17, 2018.
3. Tennessee Health Insurance - HealthCare.org. HealthCareorg. 2018. Available at: https://www.healthcare.org/states/tennessee/. Accessed May 17, 2018.
4. Statusofwomendataorg. 2018. Available at: http://statusofwomendata.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Tennessee-Fact-Sheet.pdf. Accessed May 17, 2018.
5. Brinda E, Rajkumar A, Enemark U. Association between gender inequality index and child mortality rates: a cross-national study of 138 countries. BMC Public Health. 2015;15(1). doi:10.1186/s12889-015-1449-3.
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