background: Consent-promotion and affirmative consent are central aspects of sexual violence prevention initiatives. Behaviors, actions, and cues occurring in social settings (e.g., bars, parties), including the transition to a private setting (e.g., going home together), emerged as indicating a potential partner’s consent to sexual behavior in three preliminary, qualitative studies. To examine this nuance more specifically, we assessed people’s in-the-moment perceptions of sexual consent quantitatively and with a larger sample.

method: We developed staggered vignettes of a fictional sexual encounter between two characters and asked participants (N = 1094) to indicate the extent that they believed characters consented to several sexual behaviors. We tested repeated measures MANOVA models to examine participants’ perceptions of the characters’ consent and the effects of participants’ and characters’ gender.

results: Transitioning from a social to a private setting increased participants’ perceptions of the characters’ consent to all sexual behaviors (ps < .001). We did not find the effect of transitioning to a private setting to vary by the gender of the participant or character initiating the transition. However, we found that male participants indicated that the female character was more likely to consent when the female character initiated the invitation to transition to the private setting.

conclusion: Young adults seem to endorse the transition as an important indicator of sexual consent and gender norms may influence these interpretations. We recommend that sexual assault prevention educators deconstruct such nuances in consent communication as part of a comprehensive approach to affirmative consent and sexual assault prevention initiatives.

Background: Racial/ethnic and economic inequities persist in sexual and reproductive health (SRH). To date, most research has not been community-engaged. Such approaches are especially problematic given the historical and contemporary reproductive oppression of low-income and communities of color.

Method: SisterLove leads a study with Emory University using a community-led, reproductive justice approach to explore medication abortion among Georgia's Black and Latinx communities. The study includes a Community Advisory Board; in-depth interviews with abortion providers and community-based organization (CBO) leaders; and in-depth interviews, focus groups, and a survey with Black and Latinx women.

Results: Community-led approaches result in more innovative and relevant research questions, higher research rigor, improved recruitment and retention, diverse research teams solving complex problems, health equity for marginalized groups, and dissemination of relevant resources to affected communities. Moreover, community-led research shifts the social power imbalances that bestow financial, institutional, and social privilege to traditional research organizations.

There are also common challenges that can be faced with flexible, cooperative solutions. Structural competency and cultural humility on the part of traditional research organizations are key for establishing mutual trust with community partners. There is often lower capacity for research among CBOs and lower capacity for reproductive justice and community engagement among research organizations. Community-led research can strengthen research capacity and increase funds for CBOs, while research organizations can seek out reproductive justice and related training.

Conclusion: Community-led family planning research can mitigate reproductive oppression of low-income and communities of color and reduce persistent SRH inequities.

Background: Medication abortion (MA) is an important sexual and reproductive health (SRH) service, but little is known about the MA awareness, knowledge, and perceptions among Black and Latinx communities.

Methods: The community-led team from SisterLove and Emory University, conducted semi-structured interviews with 10 abortion providers and 10 community-based organization leaders serving Black and Latinx communities in metro-Atlanta. Transcripts were analyzed using the Sort, Sift, Think, Shift protocol for thematic analysis.

Results: First, “lack of access to knowledge really creates one of the biggest barriers there is.” Lack of awareness was attributed to abortion “stigma,” “cultural beliefs,” “religion,” and “information not being given out.” At the same time, abortion physicians lack awareness about the challenges of Black and Latinx patients. Second, participants shared common misperceptions of MA as well as concerns about MA. These are rooted in historical experiences such as “Tuskegee” and other “experiments”, fears of “not be[ing] able to conceive again,” and perceptions that MA is “just another way to... get rid of our generation...to...annihilate us.” Finally, there is a general lack of knowledge about SRH including anatomy that impedes MA use. One provider explained, “She didn’t know what her vagina was.”

Conclusions: MA utilization among Black and Latinx communities is tampered by lack of awareness and knowledge of MA and SRH broadly. Experiences of scientific exploitation, reproductive coercion, and harmful contraception underlie their understanding and perceptions of MA. Improved counseling for MA is needed for patients, while abortion providers need training in structural and cultural competency.