Molly Frances Battistelli
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About Molly
Battistelli directs several projects that aim to advance reproductive justice and access to health care for all women. Her work emphasizes a public health/health services approach to understanding the complex forces that affect the policy landscape for reproductive health care in the United States. Battistelli’s current focus is on expanding access to reproductive health care in primary care settings; understanding and promoting the role of nurses in abortion care; and advancing an evidence-based approach to health policy and service delivery. She is presently examining the impact of California’s enactment of AB154 (which legalized the provision of aspiration abortion by advanced practice nurses and physician assistants in California) on primary care and reproductive health care clinics and models of care delivery. Battistelli has over a decade of experience in applied public health research; having previously worked at the University of California; Los Angeles’s Center for Health Policy; the Planned Parenthood Federation of America; and as a consultant to the RAND Corporation.
Contributions
Publications
Uses a nationally representative study of women of reproductive age to find that while 34.5% of women consider it important to know a hospital’s religious affiliation when seeking care, 80.7% consider it important to know a hospital’s religious restrictions on care. Additionally, a majority (two thirds) of women find religious restrictions on care during miscarriage management unacceptable.
Confirms the conclusion that the provision of abortion by nurse practitioners, certified nurse midwives, and physicians assistants is safe.
Finds inadequate numbers of Nurse Practitioners (NPs) trained in Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) and expanding health insurance coverage from 2010 health care reform align to create a gap in NPs to meet SRH needs, especially for low-income patients.