Midwest Access Project

GOAL (1) Train a diverse array of health care professionals who are highly motivated to provide patient-centered, antiracist reproductive health care in their future practice to underserved patient populations, but who lack access to the clinical training to do so.

GOAL (2) Build relationships with organizations and allies in the field to grow opportunities for training nationwide and build supportive community networks for providers.

GOAL (3) MAP will elevate its public profile and expand its capacity to engage new individuals and organizations through external communication, fundraising, and public programming.

To advance goal (1), MAP plans the following activities/outcomes/strategies:

• MAP will run 3 – 4 application cycles in 2022 and provide individual clinical training rotations to 40 people. A committee of board and staff will review each application, identifying those who best reflect MAP’s strategic goal of the program.
• MAP will offer didactic and clinical training rotations in telehealth care and mobile unit care serving rural Minnesota and New Mexico.
• MAP will develop an individual trainee’s motivation to provide by:
(1) exposing early stage learners to comprehensive reproductive health care and moving them toward competence by offering hands on clinical training in later stages of their clinical education;
(2) enriching and lengthening clinical training rotations for current trainees;
(3) accepting returning trainees seeking additional hands on clinical training opportunities.
• MAP will build a diverse pool of trainees who are committed to anti-racist health care and who better reflect the communities they serve by:
(1) collecting demographic and socioeconomic information from applicants;
(2) identifying unrepresented community groups in the applicant pool;
(3) creating targeted outreach strategies to diversify the pool;
(4) assisting trainees with associated costs of clinical training to reduce economic or financial barriers, and
(5) providing an online training module for first time trainees to explore the legacy of racism in healthcare and introduce strategies for building new antiracist patient centered health care models.
• Provide accessible one-time clinical education opportunities. 200 health care providers, students, and advocates receive educational material and information on reproductive topics of interest through 11 workshops and didactic presentations.

To advance goal (2) in 2022, MAP plans the following activities/outcomes/strategies:

• Create a program to offer information, resources, skill building and mentorship to MAP clinical training alum to equip them to reduce barriers and increase access to full scope comprehensive reproductive health care in their communities, practices, and institutions. To begin, in October 2020 MAP created an advisory committee consisting of board, staff, MAP alum, providers, and advocates to help identify barriers providers encounter to providing full scope reproductive health care; share promising strategies to reduce those barriers; and make recommendations for priority activities for the new program. The new Advisory Committee has 22 members and had met twice. MAP will produce a summary of the committee’s work and a program development plan.
• Continue to expand its clinical training network nationwide, focusing on states that protect access to abortion care.
• Host 2 meetings for allies and providers and attend 4 conferences/meetings focused on reproductive health care or advancing the integration of reproductive health care within primary care settings.
• Continue active partici

MAP’s Individual Clinical Training model has unique components not reflected in other training programs around the country, making the MAP training experience highly desirable and valued by trainees and our partner trainer sites.

• MAP regularly receives applications for clinical training from residents who report that they do not get the patient volume they need to reach competence and when they train, there are multiple trainees on site so they don’t receive the personalized attention of the preceptors. In contrast, MAP matches trainees with sites to meet individualized training goals, orient trainees to the training and the clinical site(s), support trainees through the training experience, and collect evaluation materials. MAP trainees are the only learners matched with a trainer.
• MAP provides both the trainees and the sites the resources, administrative coordination, orientation, scheduling, and matching that neither of the parties has the time or funds to do on their own.
• Unlike most training partnerships around the country, MAP pays its training sites a well- earned revenue stream to compensate them for the clinic time and expertise they offer MAP trainees.
• Many providers believe that training a new generation is critical to their mission. MAP works with trainers to optimize the quality of the learning experience, provide feedback to trainees, and help trainees progress to the next stage of their training or career in reproductive health. The team effort and demonstration of interdisciplinary collaboration is transparent and explicit in MAP’s practice.
• Our training partners are primarily independent clinics and outpatient health centers. Unlike residency training programs designed in hospital settings, MAP trainees experience what abortion and family planning care is like for the majority of people who provide and access it. As Guttmacher notes, 95% of abortion care occurs in clinics; this “real life” experience offers trainees high procedure volume and the ability to assess whether this care setting is a viable option for their future practice. And for those interested in primary care outpatient provision it also allows them the experience to assess how they can translate the provision of services to that setting.

MAP is the only on-the-ground organization in the Midwest addressing reproductive health training gaps. With thirteen years of expertise in the field, MAP is optimally positioned to overcome the shortage of providers in the Midwest because it is rooted in the local and state health care and advocacy communities.

2021 Progress on Goals

Related to Goal (1) Clinical Training and Provider Education

MAP’s clinical training network has reopened for our learners. Through the Fall of 2021, MAP completed one special application cycle for family planning rotations and one general application cycle. MAP received 34 applications and accepted 23 for clinical training. Through August, 26 trainees have completed their rotations and 3 are in their rotations now, and they have received a total of 320 training days. 10 rotations are scheduled for the remaining months of 2021. Telehealth and mobile health unit rotations with Just The Pill have started, and we have received very positive feedback from our trainees about these clinical rotations. MAP’s new 2-hour module on anti-racism in healthcare has been recorded and we are creating supplemental resources now. The workshop will be reviewed and evaluated by a small group of accepted trainees, and then it will be a required component of orientation for all new trainees beginning with MAP’s fall cycle.

Through September 2021, MAP offered 10 workshops for 154 participants. Workshops educated participants about patient centered pregnancy options counseling, IUD insertion and removal, all options contraception counseling, and the basics of miscarriage management. For the first time, MAP offered workshops on trauma informed pelvic examination and providing reproductive health care via telehealth. In June 2021 MAP hosted a live online workshop for residents to learn vasectomy care, and each participant received a vasectomy kits to allow them to practice techniques during the workshop. MAP also hosted a virtual workshop for providers interested in learning how to support people managing their own abortion. In September MAP hosted a panel of MAP clinical training alum at the Family Medicine Midwest conference to discuss barriers to clinical training.




Related to Goal (2) Movement Building

MAP attended National Abortion Federation’s Virtual Annual Meeting in May 2021. For the first time in our organization’s history, MAP exhibited virtually. 72 meeting participants engaged with MAP program staff in our virtual booth. MAP also convened a networking session for 25 people during the meeting to connect advocates, clinicians and prospective trainees around areas of shared interest. Based on the success of this opportunity, MAP is open to future virtual conference exhibiting events.

MAP participates in quarterly meetings of the Contraceptive Justice Coalition convened by EverThrive Illinois and the Reproductive Health Access coalition convened by ACLU-IL. Throughout the year, MAP joins a regional meeting of abortion providers convened by New York based RHAP to network and build clinical skills. MAP is a member of a national cohort of groups working to strengthen the abortion provider pipeline. Center for Reproductive Rights and PPFA invited MAP to provide evidence establishing federal jurisdiction for the Congressional record a