New AMSA 4th-Year Reproductive Health Elective – Scholarships Available!

Fourth year medical students, this post is for you! Registration is now open!

AMSA is excited to announce a new Elective in Reproductive Justice, Family Planning, and Abortion Care, a program of AMSA’s Reproductive Health Project. This non-clinical two-week elective for fourth year domestic medical students (U.S. and Canada) pursuing family medicine or ob/gyn will center Reproductive Justice (RJ) as a human-rights framework for exploring topics related to reproductive health, family planning, 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. The elective is purposefully multidisciplinary, with opportunities to engage with sociology, history, law, cultural studies, humanities and the arts. Students will consider insights from critical social theories – including Critical Race Theory, Intersectional Feminism, and Queer Theory – to explore, pose critical questions, and reflect on the complex sociocultural, medico-legal, and politico-economic context of sexual and reproductive healthcare.

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), advances education as the practice of freedom (hooks), and is 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. Collaborative partners for the course include Indigenous Women Rising, CHOICES Memphis Center for Reproductive Health, Medical Students for Choice, Stanford University School of Medicine, and Yale Medical School.

Full course scholarships are available for AMSA members.

For more information, including the elective themes and topics and how to register, visit www.amsa.org/rhp.

Not yet an AMSA member? Visit www.amsa.org/member-center-new.