How Women's Health Volunteer Work Informs Health Systems Career

"Erik: How did your volunteer work help you establish a career in reproductive health? Gabrielle: When I was an undergrad in Berkeley I started out volunteering with an organization called ACCESS, the Women’s Health Rights Coalition. They feel very strongly that reproductive rights are very important but you can’t actually access those rights they are irrelevant. So, I started with them as a practical support volunteer driving women to health appointments, helping them arrange transportation, helping them figure out how to get from more rural areas of California into the cities where the reproductive services are really available. People think of California as a liberal place but actually your ability to utilize reproductive health services are limited by your location, even in California. So, that experience really informed my decision to go into this health systems area and help people - help connect people to the services that are there and understand sort of what makes a service truly useful. Just having the product there really is not enough. You need to figure out what motivates people to use them, what barriers do they face in their life that prevent them from being able to access those services, and how do you make a good fit between sort of the services and the products that exist and people’s real needs. "