Grant: Doctoral Research Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

The World Health Organization (WHO) has prioritized universal contraception by 2030; however, many, particularly youth and those in rural areas, struggle to access the contraception they need. In Canada, youth are the dominant contributors to the rate of unplanned pregnancies and many experience contraception inaccessibility, but their unmet needs are unknown. This project will qualitatively assess the unmet contraception needs of rural Vancouver Island youth and the intersecting social and structural factors that shape their sexual health access through community research. The study population will be 50 youth and 20-25 local sexual healthcare providers across rural and urban-rural Vancouver Island communities. This work will be rooted in intersectionality and reproductive justice from macrostructural (policy), community, and micro-services (clinics) perspectives to see the intersections that impact youths' unmet contraception needs. I will develop asset maps to understand the intersection of asset accessibility and youths' identities based on 50 youth interview data from youth co-researchers that I will thematically analyze. I will conduct interviews with 20-25 local sexual health practitioners; the transcripts will be analyzed through coding (grounded theory approach) to iteratively evaluate youths' unmet contraception needs and connections to their intersecting identities. All results will be triangulated for how they converge, complement, and expand each other to understand the individual and collective factors that impact youths' unmet contraception needs. Data will be iteratively shared with the communities to inform recommendations. It is hypothesized that minimal contraception resources will be available in remote areas and that youth with marginalized intersecting identities will have multiple unmet contraception needs. This research will help to improve contraception equity within Canada and to meet the WHO's 2023 target for universal contraception.