Sexual and Reproductive Health Care in the AANHPI Community: Understanding Barriers to Access in Georgia

Introduction

In partnership with Emory University’s Center for Reproductive Health Research in the Southeast (RISE), this report aims to explore access to sexual and reproductive health (SRH) care and to identify the individual, community, and policy-level barriers that Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) communities face in accessing care.

Very little research has explored the barriers to accessing sexual and reproductive health care for AANHPIs in the United States. Previous studies with AANHPI communities have revealed economic disparities, varying levels of SRH knowledge, and a range of obstacles to medication abortion access. This project focuses on one of the most understudied and fastest-growing ethnic groups in Georgia, addressing a critical gap in the research.

Key Findings

Key Findings

Our study found that AANHPI communities face multiple barriers to accessing sexual and reproductive health care in Georgia.

• A majority of AANHPIs had a regular SRH provider, but faced uneven usage of SRH services across racial subgroups. A large majority of surveyed AANHPI participants (83%) had a regular reproductive healthcare provider. AANHPI participants who did not have a regular SRH provider (15% of all AANHPI participants) cited financial constraints (33%), infrequent visits to SRH providers (32%), or a lack of perceived need for regular care (29%) as reasons. Most AANHPI survey participants (60%) last saw a reproductive healthcare provider in the past year, but this share fell for NHPI (29%) and Mixed Race (41%) respondents.
• AANHPIs had biased or negative experiences with SRH providers. Over six in ten surveyed AANHPI respondents (63%) perceived unfair or disrespectful treatment by reproductive healthcare professionals. A larger share of Asian respondents (70%) reported such experiences, compared to Mixed Race (24%) and NHPI (22%) respondents.
• AANHPIs prioritized gender, nonjudgmental attitudes, and racial or ethnic similarity in their SRH provider. Survey participants prioritized gender (42%), nonjudgmental attitudes (41%), and racial/ethnic similarity (37%) when selecting an SRH provider.
• A majority of foreign-born AANHPIs perceived less stigma with SRH in the U.S. Comparing community attitudes towards reproductive healthcare in their birth countries to the U.S., 64% of participants born abroad perceived less stigma in the U.S.
• A majority of AANHPIs experienced pressure or judgment about contraception from non-medical sources. Only 4% of AANHPIs felt pressured to use contraception, judged when seeking birth control information, or judged for not desiring birth control from doctors, nurses, or counselors.
• SRH knowledge varied among AANHPIs, but all racial subgroups felt least knowledgeable about abortion. Almost one in two NHPI respondents felt a little or not at all knowledgeable about abortion (48%), followed by Mixed Race (43%) and Asian (42%) respondents.
• AANHPIs primarily sought information from AANHPI-specific community-based resources and healthcare providers. Survey participants primarily sought information about SRH topics from AANHPI-specific community-based resources (43%), doctors and healthcare providers (41%), and the pharmacy (36%).
• AANHPIs had limited family conversations about SRH, contraception, sex, sexually transmitted infections, and abortion. Only one in ten (11%) turned to family as one of their top two resources for SRH information Growing up, across all racial subgroups, only one in three participants, or fewer, often discussed sexual and reproductive health, contraception, sex, sexually transmitted infections, or abortion with family.

Read more by downloading the full report as a PDF.