Skip to main content
 
Notice: Users may be experiencing issues with displaying some pages on stanfordhealthcare.org. We are working closely with our technical teams to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. Thank you for your patience.
 

See our updated masking policy »

Stanford Health Care

Disparities in fertility knowledge among women from low and high resource settings presenting for fertility care in two United States metropolitan centers. Fertility research and practice Hoffman, J. R., Delaney, M. A., Valdes, C. T., Herrera, D., Washington, S. L., Aghajanova, L., Smith, J. F., Herndon, C. N. 2020; 6: 15

Abstract

Background: Few studies have examined health literacy and fertility knowledge among women from low income, socio-culturally diverse communities presenting for fertility care in the United States. Our study sought to examine demographic predictors of fertility-related knowledge among infertile women from low andhigh-resource communities in two major metropolitan centers in the United States.Methods: FertilityKnowledge Assessments were administered to women presenting for fertility care at county medical centers serving low-resource, largely immigrant patients and to women from largely affluent populations presenting to comprehensive fertility centers in two cities. The influence of demographic predictors on fertility knowledge was examined through regression analysis.Results: A total of 143 women were included in our analysis. In the county hospital/low resource clinic (LR, n=70), the mean age was 32.8±6.1years vs 35.0±5.0years in the fee-for-service/high resource clinic (HR, n=73). Among the LR patients, 74% were immigrants, 71% had an annual income <$25,000 and 52% had completed high school. Among HR patients, 36% were immigrants, 60% had an annual income >$100,000, and 95% had some college or above. On average, women from HR settings scored 3.0 points higher on the Fertility Knowledge Assessment than their LR counterparts (p<0.001). Upon multivariate analysis, education level remained the sole independent factor associated with fertility knowledge assessment score (p<0.001). Stratifying by resource level revealed that income was highly associated with fertility knowledge (p<0.01) among high resource individuals even when adjusting for education level.Conclusions: Women from lowresource, largely immigrant communities, seeking fertility care have greater disparities in fertility knowledge and lower health literacy compared to women from high resource clinical settings. Further studies are needed to understand these barriers and to develop targeted inventions to lower disparities and improve care for these vulnerable populations.

View details for DOI 10.1186/s40738-020-00084-1

View details for PubMedID 32821417