IWPR Launches Connect for Success Initiative to Expand Sexual and Reproductive Health Supports for Community College Students
Community college students often have less access to reproductive health resources than their four-year college counterparts. Coupled with the overturn of Roe v. Wade and wildly inequitable access to abortion care across states, community college students face unique challenges when seeking these needed services.
In response, the Institute for Women’s Policy Research is excited to announce the launch of a new initiative, Connect for Success, designed to help address this vital issue.
Connect for Success aims to resource, document, and scale best practices for connecting community college students with high-quality reproductive health supports, information, and resources. The goal is to increase the number of community colleges fostering these connections for their students; help students access the resources they need; and spur policymakers and funders to prioritize and support these efforts.
The Connect for Success initiative will expand access to sexual and reproductive health supports in community colleges through the following mechanisms:
- Convene and engage a committed learning community of stakeholders offering services on campuses or through cross-sector partnerships between healthcare providers, community colleges, and community-based organizations that work to connect students with high-quality, affordable, and culturally congruent services and resources.
- Study, disseminate, and advocate for the expansion of “promising practices” regarding sexual and reproductive health supports for community college students.
- Award grants to explore how community colleges are working to meet the sexual and reproductive health care needs of their students.
Equitable educational outcomes for young adults depend on equitable access to the resources they need to persist in higher education. By launching this initiative, IWPR recognizes and seeks to address the urgent need community college students have for access to reproductive care and freedom to succeed in education that will set them up for long-term success.
To be added to our stakeholder list or for more information, contact Martinique Free at free@iwpr.org.
Centering the Student Voice: Community Colleges and Sexual and Reproductive Health Access in Texas and Mississippi
Community college students’ lives outside of the classroom—including their sexual and reproductive health— can directly impact their ability to succeed in school, yet most community colleges do not provide sexual and reproductive health services (Bernstein and Reichlin Cruse 2020). Growing efforts to implement holistic approaches to student success also often ignore the role that sexual and reproductive health outcomes can play students’ academic careers.
Improving Success in Higher Education through Increased Access to Reproductive Health Services
Pregnancy and childbearing have implications for a number of economic and social outcomes, including educational attainment (Sonfield et al. 2013). Yet young people are often left without the knowledge and tools to make informed reproductive health decisions. The majority of adolescents and young adults are sexually active but many hold incorrect or limited information about how to effectively avoid unintended pregnancies.
