Back to Annual Meeting

Back to Annual Meeting

APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Recorded presentation

Jennifer Templeton Dunn, JD¹, Diana Taylor, RNP, PhD¹, and Tracy Weitz, MPH PhD(c)². (1) Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health, Bixby Center for Reproductive Health Research & Policy, University of California, San Francisco, 1001 Potrero Ave., Bldg. 10, Ward 12, Room 1222, San Francisco, CA 94110, 415-476-4527, dunnj@obgyn.ucsf.edu, (2) Bixby Center for Reproductive Health Research & Policy, Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health, 655 13th St., Raymond House Ste 201, Oakland, CA 94612

Access to abortion providers continues to decline in the United States. One potential solution is to expand the number and type of health care providers that offer abortion care. Training nurse practitioners, certified nurse midwives and physicians assistance, collectively known as advanced practice clinicians (APCs) to perform abortions meets this goal. In addition to being skilled women's health providers, APCs often practice in clinical settings serving low income and geographically isolated women. Unfortunately, many states have laws specifying that only licensed physicians can perform abortions. These laws, however, were passed before APCs were accepted into the health care community as highly skilled and competent providers, and before significant advancements in abortion technology and training. This paper reviews the efforts of the Access through Primary care (APC) Initiative which seeks to make the practice and regulatory changes necessary to allow APCs to provide aspiration abortion care in California. The APC Initiative has proposed a demonstration project through the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD) which allows for the suspension of state regulations to test and evaluate improvements in the roles of health personnel. This paper explores the turf struggles among health care professions surrounding the application to undertake this pilot project. Concerns raised by organized medicine about expanding scope of practice for non-physicians are examined. The safety concerns raised in opposition to the proposal reflect larger defects in the overall health care system and in the specific system of abortion provision.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe the potential of APCs to provide abortion care
• Discuss current efforts in California to train APCs as providers of abortion care
• Explore the professional turf issues at play in efforts to allow APCs as abortion providers

Keywords: Abortion, Health Care Workers

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No

Recorded presentation