Adding Insult to Injury: A Mixed Method Approach to Understanding Disparities in Counseling and Access to Fertility Preservation Treatment

Improvements in survival rates for female cancer patients have resulted in increased desire for fertility preservation via the cryopreservation of eggs or embryos prior to undergoing gonadotoxic radiation and chemotherapy. Patients who are not offered fertility preservation or who forgo fertility preservation treatment frequently report experiencing significant decision regret and poorer quality of life. Unfortunately, previous research has found disparities in counseling for and access to fertility preservation treatment across education level, income, racial/ethnic background, sexual orientation, and age. Our goal is to better understand the role of demographic factors in counseling for and access to fertility preservation treatment. We do this by quantitative survey and qualitative interview, the gold standard in understanding individual’s lived experiences, of female cancer patients. We hope that the knowledge gained from this study will lead to new educational strategies for patients and providers that can improve patient’s reproductive futures. Preservation of women’s reproductive futures is a clinical and academic focus of many respected academic medical centers and the groundwork for such research has largely been pioneered at Northwestern. Our hope is that the current study will lead to advancements in the care of our patient’s current and future reproductive dreams and will highlight Prentice Women’s Hospital as a continued thought leader in the promotion of research and application of fertility preservation treatment.