Saman Nayyab is a PhD student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in Dr. Pablo Visconti's Lab. She is interested in the field of reproduction--regardless if it is studying the male aspect or the female aspect--and believes there is much to uncover in this field. In this blog post, Saman shares about her work in the field of contraception, what she hopes to learn as an MCI fellow, and the future outlook of male contraception.
We continue sharing thoughts and perspectives from MCI staff members with this conversation with our Advocacy Strategist Kathryn Carpenter. Kathryn initially joined MCI as a Fellow from the UNC Gillings School of Public Health and now champions many of our advocacy efforts including the creation and management of MCI’s Youth Advisory Board. In this post, she shares her motivations for working at Male Contraceptive Initiative as well as her thoughts about male contraception.
Md Abdullah Al Noman is a PhD candidate in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Minnesota. He has been working with MCI grantee Dr. Gunda Georg, on the development of male contraceptive agents. He was named as one of MCI’s 2020 predoctoral fellows and in this blog post he shares what he hopes to learn as a fellow and discusses the challenges in the field of male contraception
Introduction An organization’s vision, mission, and values are its heart and soul. They act as the North Star that guides all organizational activities, from strategy to execution. Male Contraceptive Initiative identified the need to update and revise these defining organizational statements in order to improve our impact and better evolve towards and align with current realities.
As we have been sharing in previous posts, sharing people’s perspectives and opinions about male contraception is an integral part of MCI’s outreach efforts. In an effort to continue sharing the thoughts and perspectives MCI staff has on the topic, we sat down and spoke with our Communications Strategist, Nica Daria. In this post, she shares her motivations for working at Male Contraceptive Initiative as well as her thoughts about male contraception.
This guest blog post comes is written exclusively for Male Contraceptive Initiative by freelance journalist Raizel Joleigh.
The topic of contraception can be contentious. Women have a host of options when it comes to birth control, and these come with their own dialogue that deserves an avenue of its own. For men, though, the only methods currently available on the market are condoms or vasectomies – unreliable and costly to reverse, respectively. 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. Here’s a Q&A with our own Heather Vahdat, Logan Nickels, and Kevin Shane.
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.
This blog post is by Heather Vahdat, MCI Executive Director.
The National Center for Health Statistics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently published a brief related to sexual activity and contraceptive use among young people between the ages of 15-19 in the United States. Given that young people are a key population for us at Male Contraceptive Initiative, I found the report to be interesting across the board; however, one key finding particularly caught my attention: “The condom remains the most commonly used contraceptive method among female teenagers”. In fact, 97% of female teenagers who have had sex reported ever having used a condom. We cite a statistic all the time – that close 50% of pregnancies, both in the US and globally, are unintended. And that’s a staggering number. But we often don’t talk about what is intended.
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. 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. Nearly half of all pregnancies worldwide are unintended and current options do not meet the needs of users desiring contraception, specifically with respect to male methods which are still limited to condoms and vasectomy. Despite this, there has been little progress in the development of new male contraceptives for the past half century. This is largely due to limited funding and, by extension, limited human resources working to address this shortfall. The progress that has been made to date is thanks to the tireless efforts of a small group of passionate scientists and advocates.
As with the rest of the world, COVID-19 has turned our lives at Male Contraceptive Initiative upside down. We have closed our office in Durham and taken to working from our respective homes the past week, and each of us is doing our part via social distancing and nearly compulsive hand-washing. These are uncertain days, to say the least.
We spend a lot of time at Male Contraceptive Initiative thinking about how best to accelerate the research and development of novel methods of non-hormonal, reversible male contraception. It is, unfortunately, a field that simply does not receive enough attention or funding, so it is up to us to ensure that our investments have the greatest impact possible, both in the short-term and the long-term.
Gathering and sharing the perspectives of those working in the male contraception field and general public is a communications and advocacy imperative at Male Contraceptive Initiative. It is critical to our mission that we seed and share conversations around the need and demand for novel methods of male contraception in order to ensure there is grassroots support while the work takes place to move these potential products from mere ideas to market realities.
The end of each year is always a time of reflection and appreciation. It is a time to review the previous months and all of the experiences that helped define the year. Here at Male Contraceptive Initiative, we have spent the past few weeks marveling at what your support has accomplished in 2019:
The recent news coming out of India is cause for excitement amongst those interested in male contraception. Dr. Sujoy Guha and the rest of the RISUG team reported completing clinical trials in humans on the subcontinent, paving the way for access to the long-acting male contraceptive in India. News reports are saying that RISUG is now just waiting on final approvals from the Indian government, and that production could begin in as little as 6-7 months.
Intro from Male Contraceptive Initiative Executive Director Heather Vahdat :
Since joining Male Contraceptive Initiative (MCI) in 2018, one of my dreams was to establish a Youth Advisory Board (YAB). The seed of this idea was first planted when I was introduced to YTH, an organization that I now have the pleasure of calling close colleagues. I was immediately impressed by YTH’s deliberate and outward-facing commitment to youth. It occurred to me that the inclusion of youth perspectives in sexual and reproductive health research, programs, and policy should be a best practice for all organizations. In the case of MCI, I believe it is a critical practice given that today’s young men and their partners will be the first beneficiaries of non-hormonal, reversible, male contraceptive methods that are currently in development. MCI Youth Advisory Board member Connie Dean sat down with her male partner, Riley, to talk though male contraception, unequal contraceptive burden, and what to do about it.
Whenever I first mention my work with MCI or even the notion of male contraception to my female friends, I am met time again with the same statement, “Oh men won’t take that, I don’t trust it.” I get it–we’re college students with our lives ahead of us, so this fear of pregnancy is self-preservation. Whether it’s individual experience or internalized social norms that conjure this fear and consequent knee-jerk rejection, the data shows that men would take contraception if it were available, and in fact they want it to be. Now, statistics are one thing, but in my quest to assuage the worries of my friends, I sought to humanize this side of the argument: I sat down with my (male) partner, Riley, to talk it through. Ed Gillis is the CEO of Revolution Contraceptives. The company is currently working on Vasalgel, a device being developed as a long-acting, non-hormonal contraceptive intended to be reversible. He is an entrepreneur and senior level executive with proven success in early and mid-stage fundraising, OUS clinical trials, research and development and clinical manufacturing of products in early stage companies.
The conversation around male contraception has been that it will be available “soon.” Multiple articles (such as this, this, and this) dating back to the early 2000s and further have claimed that a male pill is on the way. If the timeline that’s been promised is to be believed, we should all already be able to buy and use male contraceptives. Why can’t we?
MCI conducts surveys to help us understand the perceptions of potential male contraceptive users. Gathering these perspectives helps us as an organization understand what potential consumers are looking for, and how people think about male contraception.
Dr. Wei Yan is University of Nevada, Reno Foundation Professor and Director of Single Cell Genomics & Genome Editing Core Labs at the University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine. His lab works on genetics and epigenetics of gametogenesis, and epigenetic contribution of gametes to fertilization, early embryonic development and adulthood health. Dr. Yan has published >130 peer-reviewed research articles and book chapters with >6,800 citations (as of April 2019). He is the recipient of the 2009 Society for the Study of Reproduction (SSR) Young Investigator Award, the 2012 American Society of Andrology (ASA) Young Andrologist Award, the 2013 Nevada Healthcare Hero Award for Research and Technology, the 2017 University of Nevada, Reno Outstanding Researcher Award, and the 2018 SSR Research Award. In May 2016, Dr. Yan was named the University of Nevada, Reno Foundation Professor, the highest honor the University bestows upon its faculty. In November 2017, Dr. Yan was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Dr. Yan serves as co-Editor-in-Chief of Biology of Reproduction, the official journal of the SSR. For more information please visit the Yan lab website: www.weiyanlab.com.
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