The Reproductive Equity Action Lab (REAL) is committed to creating training and educational opportunities for all levels of learners. We construct pathways to ensure that learners who face disproportionate barriers to entry can engage and contribute meaningfully. In doing so, we cultivate tomorrow’s leaders and changemakers in reproductive equity research and clinical practice.
Courses
Abortion in Wisconsin and Beyond: Exploring Medical, Public Health, and Social Science Perspectives
Instructor: Tiffany Green, PhD
Audience: Medical Students
Description: This course provides medical students theopportunity to survey historical and contemporary issues surrounding abortion in the United States with an emphasis on the state of Wisconsin. An understanding of abortion-related terminology and clinical practice, and how legal and structural barriers shape inequities in access to abortion care is gained through this course. Students will learn to assess the relationships between access to abortion care and health and wellbeing using multidisciplinary approaches. As well as understanding the evolution of pro-choice and reproductive justice movements in the United States and Wisconsin. There are no other courses that address the complex historical and contemporary issues surrounding abortion care both nationally and in the Wisconsin context. The present course will offer students an opportunity to reflect on patient care and quality in their own practice.
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Learning Objectives
At the end of the course students will be able to:
- Demonstrate knowledge of contemporary abortion-related terminology and medical practice.
- Describe the evolution of abortion care in the United States and Wisconsin from the 19th-21st centuries.
- Discuss legal and structural barriers to abortion care both before and after the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Supreme Court decision.
- Describe demographic (racial/ethnic-, socioeconomic status-, nativity-, disability-, and sexual/gender identity-based) inequities in access to abortion care.
- Demonstrate understanding of how population health and social scientists establish linkages between barriers to abortion care access and population health and wellbeing.
- Understand contemporary landscape of “pro-choice” and reproductive justice movements.
Course Topics
- What is abortion? Why is it important?
- History of Abortion Care and Practices
- Legal and Structural Barriers to Abortion Care
- Clinical Knowledge and Attitudes Toward Abortion Care
- Evidence About the Impacts of Abortion On Physical/Mental Health and Socioeconomic Outcomes
- Evidence on the Relationship Between Abortion, Fertility, Pregnancy, and Birth
- Post-Dobbs: Where do we go from here?
Race in American Obstetrics and Gynecology
Instructor: Tiffany Green, PhD
Audience: Medical Students
Description: This course provides medical students with a broad overview of how ideas about race shaped the development of obstetrics and gynecology in the United States and continues to inform contemporary clinical practice. We will begin with a brief introduction to contemporary racial/ethnic inequities in reproductive health and discuss the evidence for the underlying drivers of these disparate health outcomes. Next, we will turn to the Antebellum period and learn how Southern White male doctors experimented on the bodies of enslaved Black women to gain legitimacy for the nascent subfield of (American) gynecology and played a vital role in perpetuating American chattel slavery. These medical experimentation practices extended to impoverished White Irish immigrant women and other women of color. We will then discuss how and why medical doctors led the shift from births at home to hospitals, but prevented Black patients from accessing key medical advances and Black doctors from acquiring the most up-to-date training to meet their patients’ needs. We will also learn about the vital role Black midwives and doctors played in serving Black patients and improving population health despite these structural barriers. Next, we explore the central role of obstetrics in the eugenics movement and medical experimentation on populations of color, including involuntary permanent contraception and scientific testing of the Pill. We then weigh the evidence for the relationships between racial bias and inequities in patient care and outcomes. Finally, we will end with an overview of systemic solutions to this long standing issue.
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Learning Objectives
At the end of the course students will be able to:
- Demonstrate understanding of how race informed the evolution of obstetrics and gynecology as a discipline
- Describe the symbiotic relationship between slavery and obstetrics and gynecology and the contributions of enslaved Black women to key advances in the discipline
- Discuss the contradictions between physicians’ beliefs in racial inferiority of Black and Irish women and the use of their bodies as medical exemplars
- Understand the role that obstetricians and gynecologists played in the eugenics movement and medical experimentation on populations of color
- Demonstrate understanding of how historical stereotyping and treatment of Black women and birthing persons (and other marginalized groups) has led to institutionalized stereotyping in present-day obstetrics and gynecology
- Describe the progression of racial/ethnic disparities in reproductive health from the antebellum era to the present day
- Identify policy solutions to address clinical and social drivers of racial inequities in reproductive health
Course Topics
- Historical Origins of Obstetrics and Gynecology
- Reproductive Health Disparities
- The Role of Scientific Racism in Medicine
- Eugenics and Medical Experimentation
- Stereotyping and Structural Racism in Medical Care
- Disparate Access to Medical Advances
- Solutions to Address Racial Inequities
Postdoctoral Training
There is not currently an open Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Reproductive Equity Action Lab (REAL). If you are interested in being updated when future opportunities are announced, please sign up for our newsletter.
Postdoctoral Fellowship: The Health Disparities Research Scholars (HDRS) Program
The Health Disparities Research Scholars (HDRS) Program is an interdisciplinary post-doctoral training program based in the Department of Population Health Sciences at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. This program supports the training of scholars from diverse fields to become interdisciplinary researchers with a focus on health among minoritized populations, particularly maternal/child, adolescent, and family health.
Associate Director: Tiffany Green, PhD