I AM A LOOKING TO GO

AMSA believes reproductive health services are essential to comprehensive health care,
and we support full access to the entire range of reproductive services.
We believe legal, safe, voluntary abortions should be available to all who need them,
regardless of how much they earn, who they work for, or what state they live in.

AMSA also believes both Undergraduate Medical Education (UME) and Graduate Medical Education (GME) programs should offer abortion education and training — especially
Family Medicine & OB/GYN residency programs.

The AMSA Abortion Care & Reproductive Health Project addresses the “hidden curriculum” in medical school, prepares students to think critically about abortion-related education and training opportunities, and provides students with issue education, advocacy training, and hands-on skill building sessions.

We work with AMSA members, chapters, alumni, and allies to ensure a diverse physician workforce that includes highly skilled, culturally sensitive physicians prepared to provide abortion services to those who need them in various health care workplaces.

Action Tools & Resources

AMSA Repro Health & Justice eNews

Special delivery right to
your in-box

Sign-up Today!

Read & Share
Current & Past Issues

 

Hands-on
Skill-building

MVA “Papaya” Workshops

Group Options for
Chapters & Schools

Virtual & In-person

Engage Classmates!

Films & Conversation
& More!

Virtual & In-person

Get to Know Your
U.S. Senators

Explore

AMSA Abortion Care & Reproductive Justice Institutes

The AMSA Abortion Care & Reproductive Justice Institutes
2024 – 2025

AMSA Abortion Care & Reproductive Justice Institutes are deisgned to engage small groups of U.S. based medical students in thought-provoking, dynamic conversations, as well as issue education, and hands-on clinical skill-building, with key experts working in abortion care, reproductive health and education, research, or reproductive and social justice. AMSA will be hosting a number of Institutes during 2024-2025.

Successful applicants will receive stipend reimbursements to cover their travel expenses.
All meals, on-site training supplies, and transportation to the retreat location are provided at no cost.

Add Your Name to the the Waiting List Today!

Those on the waiting list will receive notification prior to opening the application to general membership.

AMSA Abortion Care & Reproductive Justice Institutes will be held in private retreat-like settings nestled in nature yet easily accessible locations. The Institutes are designed to provide deep dive opportunities to build knowledge, skills, and connections in a supportive, nurturing and Love-centered community, with a focus on finding and connecting with joy as we work on challenging issues facing our communities and future practice as physicians. Learning opportunities will include a clinical skill-building MVA “papaya” workshop and values-clarification training, along with:
  • effective messaging communications,
  • networking and advocacy training,
  • building power and your circles of influence,
  • identifying and engaging reproductive freedom champions in your state, and
  • values-based research and using data to make change.

Please complete this short form to add your name to the priority waiting list for our next Institutes. 

The program begins on Thursday evening with a group dinner and ends after breakfast on Sunday morning.  In addition to didactic and clinical workshop-style learning, there will be ample time for informal conversations, delicious meals and snacks, walking in the woods, star-gazing, and relaxing in the hot-tubs and around the fire. Each participant will have their own bedroom, some bathrooms will be shared. Meals are prepared together along with clean-up. 

Institute participants will receive a variety of take-home resources and assistance to organize 1 or more local events. Local events could include, but are not limited to: clinical skills-building, networking and advocacy training, issue education, understanding state reproductive health policies, and values-based messaging and research.

Add Your Name to the the Waiting List Today!

AMSA Reproductive Health Elective

AMSA Elective in Abortion Care, Family Planning & Reproductive Justice (non-clinical)

FALL 2024 & WINTER 2025
1 credit P/F Electives – Seats Limited

A virtual, credit-bearing elective for US and international medical students (all years), residents, fellows, and graduate public health students who are passionately interested in developing and deepening their knowledge and skills in abortion care, family planning, and reproductive justice.
Fall 2024 Elective: Monday, September 23 – Friday, October 4, 2024
Registration Closed

Winter 2025 Elective: Monday, January 20 – Friday, January 31, 2025
All sessions will be held from
1:00pm – 3:00pm ET via Zoom
No in-person components, this elective is conducted fully online,
and may be taken for credit, or audited (not for credit).

Program Description:

Developed in partnership between the AMSA Reproductive Health Project and the RJ Med Ed Project of the University of Michigan Medical School, this virtual elective for U.S. and international medical students (in particular, medical students pursuing family medicine or ob/gyn) will center Reproductive Justice (RJ) as a human-rights framework for exploring topics related to reproductive health and abortion care, including approaches to RJ-informed and trauma-informed patient care. The course will present reproductive health education with a focus on the interconnections of power, privilege, oppression, and resistance. Students will engage with critical social theories – including Critical Race Theory, Intersectional Feminism, and Queer Theory – to explore, interrogate, and reflect on the complex sociocultural, medico-legal, and politico-economic context of sexual and reproductive health.

The program is grounded in a pedagogy of liberatory education (Paulo Freire; bell hooks), and in a commitment to practicing an ethics of Love-centered educational care for adult learners that help us create and sustain deeper relationships within intentional communities.

This course will cover healthcare delivery including family planning and abortion care in a post-Roe reality. Even though this is a non-clinical elective, we will significantly incorporate approaches to patient care that are loving and affirmative of the universal human right to bodily autonomy, agency, and dignity, with a focus on correcting and repairing medicine’s ethical failures to honor the bodily autonomy, agency, and dignity of women and femme people generally, and especially Indigenous and Black women, and queer and trans people.

Themes & Topics:

  • Reproductive Justice: Framework, definitions, and herstory
  • Historical Injustices and Today’s Crises: The continuous thread of scientific and medical racism and sexism in Reproductive Health and abortion care
  • Family Planning and Abortion Care: Options counseling, values clarification, medication and procedural abortion, messaging and framing
  • Her Stories of Resistance: Honoring those who fight back, speak up, and labor to get free
  • Power and Control in Reproductive Health & Abortion Care: Religion, morality, masculinity and medicine – who gets to claim the right to shape reality
  • Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice: Access, disparities, and structural competency
  • Reproductive Health Law and Policies: At the intersection of medicine and law, patient and community, care and advocacy
  • Affirmative Patient Care: Sexual and reproductive healthcare for LGB+, trans, queer, and non-binary people
  • Human-centered Care: Professional humility, trauma-informed sensitivity, cultural safety, and non-violent communication
For more information email Dr. Jeff Koetje (jkoetje@amsa.org), Dr. Aliye Runyan (arunyan@amsa.org), and Dr. Charisse Loder (loder@med.umich.edu).

AMSA Reproductive Health Mentorship Sprints

AMSA’s Reproductive Health Mentorship Sprint is designed to pair interested mentors and mentees for a structured 4-week mentorship experience to discuss topics like:

  • Reproductive Justice
  • Gender and racial justice in sexual/reproductive healthcare and primary care
  • Preparing for residency and ensuring access to training in family planning and abortion care
  • Career opportunities for clinical practice focused on family planning, abortion care, and primary care
  • The effects of public policy on reproductive health clinical care
  • Work-life balance as physician, addressing moral injury, and mitigating risk of personal harm as an abortion provider
  • Health advocacy as a physician-activist
  • Research interests in reproductive health(care), rights, and justice

Eligible applicants (current medical students) will be paired by their indication of interest in the above topics and a few other factors. We’ll match you with a mentor/mentee with similar interests, and we’ll provide resources to guide you through four mentoring sessions, one per week as explained further below. 

Fall 2024 Sprint Applications are Closed – Stay Tuned for the Next Sprint!

AMSA Reproductive Health Scholars Program

AMSA Reproductive Health Scholars Program
Fall 2024 – Now Closed

AMSA strives to empower physicians-in-training to effect change through education and advocacy. AMSA Scholars Programs are designed to provide medical and premed students with information not covered in traditional medical school curriculum and to foster an online learning community of future physicians.

The AMSA Reproductive Health Scholars Program addresses the “hidden curriculum” in medical school and prepare students to think critically about abortion-related and education and training opportunities. At the end of the program, participants develop a project utilizing the knowledge gained from the course. The projects are an application of their new skills, as well as a professional development opportunity in the participant’s school or community. Throughout the experience, participants gain valuable mentorship from their Course Directors, fellow Scholars, and partner organizations to enhance their projects.

Topics this program addresses:

  • Diversity & Equity in Abortion Access & Our Healthcare Workforce
  • Basic Clinical Overview of First & Second Trimester Abortion
  • Protecting Reproductive Health: State & Federal Laws that Impact Access & Care
  • Reproductive Justice: Framework & Advocacy
  • Options Counseling & Values Clarification in Reproductive Care
  • Birth Settings in America: Outcomes, Quality, Access, & Choice
  • When Routine Training is Unethical & Becomes Illegal: The Case of Intimate Exams for Teaching Purposes

For more information please email rhp@amsa.org

Note: Students attending an international medical schools who are either U.S. citizens or intend to practice in the US may register with the understanding our program focus is on U.S. abortion policy and practice and is not designed to address policy or practice outside the U.S.

Register by October 6

Sign-up here to get Reproductive Health Project Updates!
AMSA
American Medical Student Association
Phone: (703) 620-6600
Fax: (703) 620-6445

Follow Us

© 2022, American Medical Student Association, McLean, VA