A Qualitative Analysis on Sexual and Reproductive Health Needs and Issues During COVID-19 Using a Reproductive Justice Framework
Report Publish Date: October 20, 2022
This journal article describes a study exploring Black, Indigenous, and people of color’s experiences with sexual and reproductive health care during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Primary Takeaways
Focus group participants discussed:
- The need to expand the focus of sexual and reproductive health beyond birth to holistic needs before, during, and after pregnancy.
- The connection between police violence and mental health related to sexual and reproductive rights and raising children.
- How inequitable access to technology, or “digital redlining,” affects sexual and reproductive health.
- The need for high-quality care and cultural responsiveness.
- Joy’s relationship to liberation and survival.
Overview and Objectives
The COVID-19 pandemic increased the challenges of getting sexual and reproductive health care, especially for BIPOC communities. The authors wanted to understand the challenges BIPOC birthing people faced during the pandemic.
Hypothesis or Approach
The authors interviewed 11 people in three Zoom focus groups from May to August 2021. Participants included a scientist and advocate, public health official and midwife, nonprofit directors, a sexual health educator and doula, a health law attorney, and others.
The researchers combined two frameworks: (1) Reproductive Justice and (2) Transdisciplinary Conceptual Resilience Framework of Contextualized Resilience for Reducing Adverse Birth Outcomes.
The study was part of the University of California, Los Angeles-Charles R. Drew University COVID-19 Task Force on Racism & Equity’s COVID Storytelling Project.
How This Influences Change
“Unless systemic change centers accountability, partnership, humanization, and therefore the autonomy, liberation, joy, and pleasure [of] BIPOC communities, any efforts to improve health outcomes will only serve to further entrench racist paradigms,” the authors write.
Research: Go Deeper
The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated existing health inequities, further exposing the challenges in meeting the sexual and reproductive health (SRH) needs, particularly for Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC). We interviewed 11 key informants through three focus groups to explore barriers and pathways to SRH care for BIPOC during COVID-19 in the United States. Reimagining reproductive health practices requires holistic practices and multisector pathways, a comprehensive reproductive justice approach. This includes interventions across the sexual and reproductive health continuum. Using a deductive-dominant approach grounded in reproductive justice values, we explore themes around SRH during COVID-19. Five themes for advancing reproductive justice were identified: “supremacy of birth”; police violence as a determinant of mental health; addressing quality of care outside of hospital settings; digital redlining; and centering joy, liberation, and humanity.
Ethn Dis., October 20, 2022. doi: 10.18865/ed.32.4.357
Research Team
This study and report was conducted and created by the following:
- De la Rocha P
- Sudhinaraset M
- Jones NV
- Kim C
- Cabral A
- Amani B
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