Kristen Mark
University of Minnesota, MN·Public Health & Epidemiology
People with disabilities need contraception, pregnancy care, and protection from sexually transmitted infections like everyone else, yet they are frequently left out of reproductive healthcare entirely. In sub-Saharan Africa, where rates of HIV, sexually transmitted infections, and unintended pregnancy are the highest in the world, no formal training was found that teaches healthcare providers how to address the reproductive and sexual health needs of people with disabilities.
- Fields
Public Health & Epidemiology
Medicine & Clinical Research
Education Research
- Topics
reproductive health
sexual health
persons with disabilities
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2028
What they work on
- Conduct a social ecological needs assessment of reproductive and sexual health care delivery for persons with disabilities in Tanzania, interviewing about 20 persons with disabilities and 20 caregivers about their experiences accessing care.
- Map provider-side needs through focus groups with midwifery, nursing, and medical students and 12 individual key-informant interviews, to determine what content a disability-focused curriculum must cover.
- Adapt the existing Afrocentric reproductive and sexual health curriculum so it is culturally tailored to the Tanzanian and sub-Saharan context, and pilot test it with health students at Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences.
- Test the curriculum's effectiveness in a single-blinded randomized controlled trial against a waitlist control with 412 health students, measuring knowledge, attitudes, and counseling skills for reproductive health care of persons with disabilities.
- Embed accessibility and community guidance throughout by consulting an advisory board of Tanzanian persons with disabilities and applying Universal Design for Learning principles to all study materials.
More about the research
Reproductive healthcare is itself a sensitive subject in the region, which compounds the exclusion. This project asks whether a purpose-built, culturally grounded curriculum can change what future nurses, midwives, and doctors know, believe, and do when a patient with a disability seeks reproductive health care.
Why it matters
People with disabilities in Tanzania face some of the world's highest burdens of HIV, sexually transmitted infections, and unintended pregnancy while remaining largely invisible in reproductive healthcare. An evidence-tested training curriculum could equip the nurses, midwives, and physicians who staff clinics and shape national policy to counsel these patients competently. Because Muhimbili University trains health students from across Africa, an effective curriculum could become a regional standard.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
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University of Minnesota, MN·Public Health & Epidemiology
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Jessica Perkins
Vanderbilt University, TN·Public Health & Epidemiology
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Rachel Solnick
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, NY·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
Develop the TIPPED protocol, which uses routine post-discharge callbacks about STI results to offer HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), together with an implementation strategy shaped by stakeholder input.
The school
University of Minnesota: 88 labs on PI Pages, $1.4B a year on research, 722 research doctorates a year.
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