​We sat with the Intended showrunners to get a behind the scenes look at the creative journey of producing this science-based dialogue all about the past, present, and future of male contraception.

​As we shared in a previous post, gathering and sharing people’s perspectives and opinions about male contraception is a key advocacy effort of MCI’s. Though we often try to gather these perspectives from the public, we also wanted to share some of the perspectives MCI staff has on male contraception. In this post, we share our conversation with Executive Director Heather Vahdat as she talks about her motivations for working at Male Contraceptive Initiative as well as her thoughts about male contraception.

​Gathering and sharing the perspectives and opinions about male contraception is a key mandate of MCI’s. Through this, we are able to present a collective voice in illustrating the interest in and demand for new methods of male contraception. By extension, this allows us to dispel some of the misconceptions about the field that persist. This includes investigating topics that do not garner as much attention as others, such as men’s attitudes and experiences with unintended pregnancy and the contraceptive needs of the LGBTQ+ community. 

With this in mind, we also felt it important to share some of the perspectives MCI staff has on the topic. In this post, we share excerpts from a conversation with our Director of Programs & Operations Dr. Logan Nickels. He discusses his motivations for working at Male Contraceptive Initiative, as well as his thoughts on the potential impact new methods of male contraception can have on the world.

This blog post is by Jaylan Weaver, a 2020 MCI intern from North Carolina Central University.

As an undergraduate student at North Carolina Central University (NCCU), the Department of Public Health Education requires seniors to complete an eight-week internship with a public health agency. I viewed this experience as an opportunity to jump-start my professional life as a newly emerging health educator. Picture this…“Jaylan Weaver, Health Education Specialist”…I like the sound of that. Eager to contribute my knowledge and skills to an organization, I was encouraged to complete my internship with the Male Contraceptive Initiative (MCI) , a local nonprofit organization in Durham, North Carolina. At first, when I thought about male contraceptives, the only thing I could think of was condoms and vasectomies. However, after the first week of reading and learning about MCI, I was exposed to the vast number of male contraceptive methods currently in development. I love science, particularly biology, so learning about all of the different methods and how they affect male physiology motivated me to learn all I could.

This blog post is by Brittany Chambers, a 2020 MCI intern from North Carolina Central University.

In the words of Pablo Picasso: “There is only one way to look at things, until someone shows us how to look at them with different eyes.” This quote exemplifies my experience in my internship at Male Contraceptive Initiative (MCI) because it made me take a moment to realize the value of picturing yourself if you were in someone else’s shoes.