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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Kimberly B. Chapman, MPH, CHES, Department of Health Behavior and Health Education, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, CB# 7440, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7440, (919) 260-1090, kchapman@unc.edu and Katherine L. Turner, MPH, Training and Service Delivery Improvement, Ipas, 300 Market Street, Suite 200, Chapel Hill, NC 27516.

In many regions of the world, unsafe abortion remains a major contributor to maternal morbidity and mortality. Despite the fact that nearly every country has at least one legal indication, abortion services often remain unavailable, inaccessible or poor quality, in part due to insufficient knowledge, conflicting or unclear values, disapproving attitudes and a lack of commitment to women's sexual and reproductive rights by health care providers and wider society.

Values clarification is a process in which individuals engage in honest, open-minded and critical reflection and evaluation of new or re-framed information and situations, challenge deeply-held assumptions and myths and discover or potentially transform their values. Individuals also express intentions to act in a manner consistent with their affirmed values. Values clarification can produce measurable changes in attitude and behavioral intention. They constitute a vital step towards realizing women's human right to safe abortion care.

The Values Clarification for Abortion Attitude Transformation: Facilitator's Toolkit is designed to aid the development of values clarification interventions in which individuals learn, question, affirm and support their positions on the need for and provision of abortion and related care such that awareness of and access to comprehensive, woman-centered, high-quality abortion care is increased. The toolkit consists of a background document, literature review, theoretical framework, best practice training exercises, participant selection guidance, facilitation recommendations, sample workshop agendas and evaluation tools.

In this interactive presentation, participants will experience an abortion values clarification exercise and learn about intervention evaluation results and recommendations for other program areas and audiences.

Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of the session, the participants in this session will be able to

• Explain the theory behind abortion values clarification interventions, their goals and objectives and how they contribute to realizing women’s human right to safe abortion care
• Describe the Abortion Values Clarification and Behavior Change Theoretical Framework
• Apply the theory of values clarification to specific strategies and exercises for abortion attitude transformation and behavior change
• Describe the contents and implementation of the Values Clarification for Abortion Attitude Transformation
  Facilitator’s Toolkit, including their experience with one of the abortion values clarification exercises
  • Discuss preliminary evaluation results and recommendations for broader implementation

  Keywords: Reproductive Health, Abortion

  Presenting author's disclosure statement:

  Not Answered

  Abortion and PAC Services

  The 134th Annual Meeting & Exposition (November 4-8, 2006) of APHA