United States

Shining the light on abortion: Drivers of online abortion searches across the United States in 2018

Ndola Prata
Sylvia Guendelman
Elizabeth Pleasants
Elena Yon
Alan Hubbard
2020

Context

Legal abortion restrictions, stigma and fear can inhibit people’s voices in clinical and social

settings posing barriers to decision-making and abortion care. The internet allows individuals
to make informed decisions privately. We explored what state-level policy dimensions were
associated with volume of Google searches on abortion and on the abortion pill in 2018.

Methods

We used Google Trends to quantify the relative search volume (RSV) for “abortion” and
“abortion pill” (or “abortion pills” hereafter referred to as “abortion pill”) as a...

Using Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to Access Google Data and Gain Insights Into Searches on Birth Control in Louisiana and Mississippi, 2014-2018: Infoveillance Study

Ndola Prata
Karen Weidert
Anne Zepecki
Elina Yon
Elizabeth Pleasants
Petrice Sams-Abiodun
Sylvia Guendelman
2020

Background: It is now common to search for health information online. A 2013 Pew Research Center survey found that 77% of online health seekers began their query at a search engine. The widespread use of online health information seeking also applies to women’s reproductive health. Despite online interest in birth control, not much is known about related interests and concerns reflected in the search terms in the United States.

Objective: In this study, we identify the top search terms on Google related to birth control in Louisiana and Mississippi and compare those results to the...

Quality of top webpages providing abortion pill information for Google searches in the USA: An evidence-based webpage quality assessment

Ndola Prata
Karen Weidert
Sylvia Guendelman
Elizabeth Pleasants
2021

Background

In the United States, the internet is widely used to seek health information. Despite an estimated 18 million Google searches on abortion per year and the demonstrated importance of the abortion pill as an option for pregnancy termination, the top webpage search results for abortion pill searches, as well as the content and quality of those webpages, are not well understood.

Methods
We used Google’s Custom Search Application Programming Interface (API) to identify the top 10 webpages presented for “abortion pill” searches on...

Using Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to Access Google Data and Gain Insights Into Searches on Birth Control in Louisiana and Mississippi, 2014-2018: Infoveillance Study.

Ndola Prata
Karen Weidert
Anne Zepecki
Elina Yon
Elizabeth Pleasants
Petrice Sams-Abiodun
Sylvia Guendelman
2021

Background: It is now common to search for health information online. A 2013 Pew Research Center survey found that 77% of online health seekers began their query at a search engine. The widespread use of online health information seeking also applies to women's reproductive health. Despite online interest in birth control, not much is known about related interests and concerns reflected in the search terms in the United States.

Objective: In this study, we identify the top search terms on Google related to birth control in Louisiana and Mississippi...

Abortion access barriers shared in “r/abortion” after Roe: a qualitative analysis of a Reddit community post-Dobbs decision leak in 2022

Elizabeth Pleasants
Karen Weidert
Lindsay Parham
Ndola Prata
Ushma Upadhyay
Eliza Dolgins
Emma Anderson
Coye Cheshire
Cassondra Marshall
2024

With drastic changes to abortion policy, the months following the Dobbs leak and subsequent decision in 2022 were a uniquely uncertain and difficult time for abortion access in the United States. To understand experiences of challenges to abortion access during that time, we used a hybrid inductive and
deductive thematic coding approach to analyse descriptions of barriers and their impacts shared in an abortion subreddit (r/abortion). A simple random sample of 10% of posts was obtained from those shared from 02 May 2022 through 23 December 2022; comments were purposively sampled during...

Maternal and Infant Health Outcomes in US-Born and Non-US-Born Black Pregnant People in the US.

Mariah Jiles
Ndola Prata
Kim G. Harley
2024

Importance With disparate Black maternal health outcomes in the US and a steadily expanding non–US-born Black population, it is beneficial to investigate Black maternal health outcomes by country of origin.

Objective To compare the prevalence of maternal morbidity and infant birth outcomes between US-born and non–US-born Black populations in the US.

Design, Setting, and Participants This cross-sectional study included all registered hospital births in the US from the 2021 National Vital...

Using Natural Language Processing to Describe the Use of an Online Community for Abortion During 2022: Dynamic Topic Modeling Analysis of Reddit Posts

Elizabeth Pleasants
Ndola Prata
Ushma D Upadhyay
Cassondra Marshall
Coye Cheshire
2025
Background Abortion access in the United States has been in a state of rapid change and increasing restriction since the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision from the US Supreme Court in June 2022. With further constraints on access to abortion since Dobbs, the internet and online communities are playing an increasingly important role in people’s abortion trajectories. There is a need for a broader understanding of how online resources are used for abortion and how they may reflect changes in the sociopolitical and legal context of abortion access. Research...

Have Others Had This Experience? A Qualitative Analysis of Posts on Self-Managed Abortion to US-Based Reddit Community

Karen Weidert
Ndola Prata
Lindsay Parham
Eliza Dolgins
Emma Anderson
Elizabeth Pleasants
2025

Objectives: Limiting abortion within the formal health care system is associated with more self-managed abortion (SMA). Reddit is a publicly available social networking site that allows users to create and join communities (“subreddits”) around a specific topic. R/abortion is a subreddit dedicated to providing support and advice to people seeking or having an abortion. The purpose of this study is to analyze r/abortion data after the Dobbs leak in 2022 to explore SMA access and use experiences shared in the community.

Methods: We employed a hybrid qualitative thematic analysis...

Behavioral Innovations to Access Abortion Post-Dobbs: A Qualitative Thematic Analysis of Reddit’s r/abortion Community in 2022

Eliza Dolgins
Lindsay Parham
Karen Weidert
Emma Anderson
Coye Cheshire
Ndola Prata
Elizabeth Pleasants
2025

Following the leak of the Dobbs decision in 2022, abortion access in the United States has faced heightened barriers, including legal restrictions, financial constraints, and logistical challenges. In response, individuals seeking abortion care can employ innovative behavioral strategies to overcome these barriers and reshape their abortion experiences (ie, “behavioral innovations”). This paper explores the behavioral innovations to access abortion that people discussed and recommended within a geographically dispersed community of peers on an abortion-supportive Reddit community (r/...

The Impact of Air Quality on Patient Mortality: A National Study

Ndola Prata, MD, MSc
Isabella Chu
Marie Diener-West
Divya Periyakoil
2025

INTRODUCTION


Air pollution is a risk factor for a variety of cardiopulmonary diseases and
is a contributing factor to cancer, diabetes, and cognitive impairment. The impact on
mortality is not clearly elucidated. Objectives: The goal of this study is to determine the
impact (if any) of air pollution on the 5-year mortality of patients in the American Family
Cohort (AFC) dataset. Methods: The AFC dataset is derived from the American Board of
Family Medicine PRIME Registry electronic health record data. It includes longitudinal
information from 6.6 million unique...