A Health Professional Mentorship Platform to Improve Equitable Access to Abortion: Development, Usability, and...

Access to safe abortion care is a reproductive right for all individuals across Canada. Underserved populations are overrepresented among those with unintended pregnancies and particularly those seeking abortion. Yet, few resources exist to help health care and allied helping professionals provide culturally competent and gender-affirming abortion care to such a population group.

This project aimed to redesign and adapt an existing subscription-based medication abortion mentorship platform into a culturally appropriate and gender-affirming open-access website of curated health professional resources to promote equitable, accessible, high-quality abortion care, particularly for underserved populations.

We drew on a user-centered design framework to redesign the web platform in 5 iterative phases. Health care and allied helping professionals were engaged in each stage of the development process including the initial design of the platform, curation of the resources, review of the content, and evaluation of the wireframes and the end product.

This project resulted in an open-access bilingual (English and French) web-based platform containing comprehensive information and resources on abortion care for health care providers (physicians, nurse practitioners, and pharmacists) and allied helping professionals (midwives, medical officers, community workers, and social workers). The website incorporated information on clinical, logistical, and administrative guidance, including culturally competent and gender-affirming toolkits that could equip health care professionals with the requisite knowledge to provide abortion care for underserved populations.

This platform contains resources that can increase the competencies of health care professionals to initiate and sustain culturally and contextually appropriate abortion care for underserved groups while clarifying myths and misconceptions that often militate against initiating abortion. Our resource also has the potential to support equitable access to high-quality abortion care, particularly for those among underserved populations who may have the greatest unmet need for abortion services yet face the greatest barriers to accessing care.