Jacobs in the News

“Maintaining access to care relies on both a robust workforce that can provide that care and on those providers receiving the support they need," Julia Strasser told Contemporary OB/GYN. The article describes her team's research findings regarding the contraception and abortion workforce in 2019-2021.

COVID-19 strained the reproductive health workforce over the past few years, and the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade adds another stress. For Relias Media, Julia Strasser described her team's findings from research on the contraception and abortion workforce in 2019-2021. 

“As we have already seen — even with a few months of the Dobbs decision — it does not just affect abortion care, it affects so much of healthcare,” Julia Strasser told Relias Media. She noted that we've already seen news of people not receiving potentially life-saving care for a miscarriage.

Susan Wood explained to ABC News that recent studies have clarified the mechanism of action for emergency contraceptive Plan B, so we now know it only works when taken before ovulation.

“It seems like they’re laying the groundwork for considering contraception itself as medical waste,” Susan Wood told Alice Miranda Ollstein about abortion opponents’ attempt to use environmental laws to block the distribution of abortion pills.

Lydie Lake and Rory Quealy of the George Washington University student newspaper wrote about a study by Julia Strasser and colleagues that tracked changes in the abortion and contraceptive services workforce between 2019 and 2021. They found a drop in the number of physicians working in these areas and an “encouraging rise” in the number of advanced practice clinicians offering such care.

Julia Strasser provided an invited perspective on a new study that found Black women experience worse IVF outcomes and neighborhood deprivation does not explain differences in IVF success. “These findings highlight the need for health services researchers to consider not only differences in race and ethnicity, but other structural factors that may affect both access to care and underlying needs for treatment,” Strasser commented.

A study by Julia Strasser and colleagues found the number of physicians providing contraceptive services is decreasing. "Researchers suggested that investing in women’s health and primary care physicians, along with state-level expanded scope of practice policies, could strengthen that segment of the workforce," wrote Rebecca Pifer about the research.

In an article about the possibility of an over-the-counter birth control pill, Julia Strasser explained that such an option can eliminate such access barriers but “can never replace what is lost because of abortion access barriers.”