Primary care physicians' concerns may affect adolescents' access to intrauterine contraception.

PURPOSE: Although the intrauterine device (IUD) may be safely used in adolescents, few US adolescents use IUDs. Increasing IUD use in adolescents can decrease pregnancy rates. Primary care providers' clinical practices many be one of the many barriers to increasing adolescents access to IUDs. We explored primary care physicians' (PCPs) approaches to contraception counseling with adolescents, focusing on their views about who would be appropriate IUD candidates. METHODS: Phone interviews were conducted with 28 urban family physicians, pediatricians, and obstetrician-gynecologists. Using standard qualitative techniques, we developed coding template and applied codes. RESULTS: Most respondents have a patient-centered general contraceptive counseling approach. However, when considering IUDs many PCPs describe more paternalistic counseling. For example, although many respondents believe adolescents' primary concern is pregnancy prevention, many PCPs prioritize sexually transmitted infection (STI) prevention and thus would not offer an IUD. Attributes PCPs associate with an appropriate IUD candidate include responsibility, reliability, maturity, and monogamy. CONCLUSION: Our findings suggest that when considering IUDs for adolescents some PCPs' subjective assessment of adolescent sexual behavior, attitudes about STI risk factors and use of overly restrictive IUD eligibility criteria impede adolescent's IUD access. Education around best practices may be insufficient to counterbalance attitudes concerning adolescent sexuality and STI risk; there is also a need to identify and discuss PCPs potential biases or assumptions affecting contraception counseling.

The global reproductive health market: U.S. media framings and public discourses about transnational surrogacy.

During the first decade of the 21st century a new "dramatic story" about the growing global surrogacy industry brought renewed attention to surrogacy as a social problem and a health policy issue. This paper asks: What cultural assumptions about gender, family and the global reproductive health market are revealed in current U.S. media coverage of and public discourses about surrogacy? From a qualitative analysis of prominent news accounts of surrogacy that were published in 2008, New York Times articles and blogs published on the topic between 2006 and 2010, and over 1000 online reader comments to these articles, I identify key frames used to discursively construct and debate the international surrogacy market. This study reveals the distinct contrast between the occasions when reproductive labor is rhetorically distanced from commodification processes and when it is linked to those processes. The findings contribute to intersectional analyses of assisted reproductive practices and women's health/bodies/gametes. In particular, this study's analysis of recent media framings of and public discourses about surrogacy across the globe serves as another illustration that national/classed/racialized bodies continue to be reproductively stratified via differently gendered discourses about women, motherhood and family.

Interrogating the dynamics between power, knowledge and pregnant bodies in amniocentesis decision making.

A common assumption is that women who decline prenatal testing distrust biomedicine and trust embodied/experiential knowledge sources, while women who accept testing trust biomedicine and distrust embodied/experiential sources. Another major assumption about prenatal testing utilisation is that women who are open to abortion will undergo prenatal testing while those who are opposed to abortion will decline testing. Yet, previous research has produced inconsistent findings as to what, if anything, distinguishes women who accept or decline the offer of prenatal diagnosis. Analysing interviews with 147 pregnant women, this paper questions these assumptions about the role of abortion views and pregnant women's relative trust in various knowledge sources on their decisions to accept or decline an amniocentesis offer after a positive result on an initial diagnostic screening. We found that pregnant women's attitudes toward different knowledge sources were equally, if not more, important factors than abortion views in affecting whether individual women accepted or declined amniocentesis. At the same time, our data reveal that the relationship between 'expert' and 'lay' knowledge sources is often complex and synergistic.

Role of Black churches in health promotion programs: lessons from the Los Angeles Mammography Promotion in Churches Program.

OBJECTIVES: This article assesses pastor-level factors that affect the successful recruitment and implementation of community-based health promotion programs in Black churches. METHODS: Semistructured interviews with 16 pastors of Black churches were analyzed for content. RESULTS: We found that although the involvement of Black pastors in an array of secular activities makes them open to participate in health programs, their overcommitment to other issues can negatively influence their ability to participate. Second, although Black pastors appreciate being included in and benefiting from health research, minorities' history of being underserved and exploited can lead to suspiciousness and reluctance to participate. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that those interested in developing church-based health programs in the Black community must be attuned to how the same factors can both facilitate and hinder a program's development.