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University of Maryland selected to evaluate Delaware contraceptive access program

Multi-year project will involve 15 researchers at the University of Maryland College Park, University of Maryland Baltimore County, and the University of Delaware, Newark

Maryland Population Research Center (MPRC) Director and Professor of Sociology Michael Rendall will lead a multi-institution research team that will conduct a five-year evaluation of the State of Delaware's Contraceptive Access Now (Del-CAN) intervention in a project funded by a private foundation. The mixed-methods project will evaluate the Del-CAN intervention against its aims of: 1) reducing unintended pregnancies; 2) reducing Medicaid costs for unintended pregnancies; and 3) supporting policy development that enables contraceptive access to all women who desire it. The evaluation will address both the intervention’s effectiveness and the underlying mechanisms of change brought about by the intervention. The goals of the evaluation are to understand both the extent of initial and sustained impacts in Delaware and the degree to which these impacts may be generalizable to other states.

At the University of Maryland College Park the study will comprise efforts from faculty in Sociology, the Joint Program in Survey Methodology, and Economics in the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, and faculty in Health Services Administration and Family Science in the School of Public Health. At the University of Delaware the Department of Sociology, the Center for Community Research and Service, and the Center for Drug and Health Studies will contribute both research expertise and data coordination with Delaware state agencies, and the University of Maryland Baltimore County’s Hilltop Institute will coordinate comparisons of Maryland and Delaware Medicaid-eligible women. Between eight and ten graduate student research assistants and between three and five research associates will be involved at various stages of the project.