For many women with physical disabilities, the basics of reproductive health come with unique challenges.

That’s not news to medical community, but providers do not have a way to measure the experiences of these women and how they relate to those without such conditions, said Claire Kalpakjian, Ph.D., M.S., associate professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Michigan Medicine.

“We’ve known for several decades that these are areas where many women face challenges, but what we haven’t done is start to create solutions to these problems,” Kalpakjian said. “You can’t fix what you can’t measure, so we need to create measures that show us the scope of the issues, how many people are affected and in what ways. This is what we need to inform ways we can intervene and change things.”

Read more...