Registration is open now for this 2-week online elective for AMSA members who are U.S./Canadian 3rd & 4th-year medical students.
Scholarships Available, Apply Here Today!
Program Dates: Monday, 4/12/2021 – Friday, 4/23/2021
Program Location: Online/Virtual
Program Eligibility & Cost: 3rd & 4th-year U.S. medical students who are AMSA members, full-scholarships are available
Program Description:
This two-week elective for third and fourth year U.S. medical students (in particular, MS3s and MS4s 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.
Modeled after AMSA’s HEART-IM 4th-year elective (Humanistic Elective in Activism, Reflective Transformation, and Integrative Medicine), the program is grounded in a pedagogy of liberatory education (Freire, hooks), and committed to educational care practices that help us create and sustain deeper relationships within intentional communities.
The course will cover healthcare delivery including family planning and abortion care, and approaches to patient care that are loving and affirmative of the human autonomy, agency, and dignity of women, including and especially Indigenous and Black women, and queer and trans people.
Themes and Topics covered will include:
- 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
Course Credit: Course accreditation anticipated – TBD.
Elective Schedule: Students must be able to attend and participate in daily core sessions, held Monday through Friday at 12:00pm – 2:00pm ET. Each day, students will meet for an additional one to two hours in the late afternoon (e.g., 4:00pm – 6:00pm ET) or early evening (e.g., 7:00pm – 9:00pm ET) for a series of workshops that will include reflection and writing, debriefing and check-ins, clinical skills practice, mentoring and coaching, and community-building. Anticipated out-of-class time for self-directed learning will be one to two hours each day. All sessions will be recorded and made available to students through the digital classroom platform.
Apply Here Today: Scholarship application deadline is Monday, March 22, 2021. Applications will be considered on a rolling basis and students will receive notification within 5 business days of submitting their application.