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Infertility Status and Infertility Treatment: Racial and Ethnic Disparities

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Reducing Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Reproductive and Perinatal Outcomes

Abstract

Difficulties in conceiving or carrying a child to term affect 12% of the 62 million American women between ages 15–44 (Chandra, Martinez, Mosher, Abma, & Jones, 2005). Involuntary childlessness often leads to disappointment and despair, contributing to depression, marital strife and social stigma. Although infertility status, access to infertility care, and response to medical treatment are not ­distributed uniformly among women of reproductive age, few studies have examined the experiences of women of color. Evidence suggests important racial/ethnic disparities in the diagnosis and ­prevalence of infertility. Furthermore, the privatization of infertility clinical services and the high costs of these services have contributed to wide racial and socioeconomic inequalities in utilization of treatment.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    A woman is defined as surgically sterile if she or her current husband or cohabiting partner had an unreversed sterilizing operation, such as a tubal ligation or vasectomy.

  2. 2.

    It should be noted that the NSFG constructs the outcomes “infertility” and “impaired fecundity” from responses to items such as marital status, sexual activity, contraceptive use, and sterility.

  3. 3.

    Hereafter, black non-Hispanics, white non-Hispanics and Hispanics of any race will be referred to as blacks, whites and Hispanics. Asians are included in the NSFG in the “Other” category. The “Other” category combines women of several racial and ethnic origins and is not presented here.

  4. 4.

    Although the 2002 NSFG data reports Hispanic origin as well as race (black, white), the other clinical studies reviewed in this chapter do not distinguish Hispanic origin apart from race/ethnicity, and in these studies racial/ethnic groups are commonly classified as “white,” “black,” “Asian” or “Hispanic.”

  5. 5.

    Approximately half of U.S. ART procedures utilize intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), a technique in which a single sperm is injected into an egg (Wright, Schieve, Reynolds, & Jeng, 2005).

  6. 6.

    Two other modifications of this procedure are (1) gamete intrafallopian transfer (GIFT) in which gametes are transferred to the fallopian tube immediately following egg retrieval and (2) zygote intrafallopian transfer (ZIFT) in which a fertilized egg (Zygote) is transferred to the fallopian tube by laparoscopy the day following egg retrieval (Steinberg, Holtz, Sullivan and Villar, 1998).

  7. 7.

    For up to date statistics on ART cycles, refer to the following website: http://www.cdc.gov/art/.

  8. 8.

    The Fertility Clinic Success Rate and Certification Act includes a voluntary certification program for ART laboratories to ensure quality of care, and provides consumers with standardized information on ART success rates from individual ART clinics.

  9. 9.

    For ease of reading, this paper will report all national ART results as IVF results.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 94720-7360, USA

    Sylvia Guendelman

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  1. Sylvia Guendelman
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  2. Laura Stachel
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Correspondence to Sylvia Guendelman .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Public Health, Community Health Sciences, University of Illinois, Chicago, West Taylor Street 1603, Chicago, 60612-4394, Illinois, USA

    Arden Handler

  2. School of Public Health, Community Health Sciences, University of Illinois, Chicago, West Taylor Street 1603, Chicago, 60612-4394, Illinois, USA

    Joan Kennelly

  3. School of Public Health, Community Health Sciences, University of Illinois, Chicago, West Taylor Street 1603, Chicago, 60612-4394, Illinois, USA

    Nadine Peacock

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Guendelman, S., Stachel, L. (2011). Infertility Status and Infertility Treatment: Racial and Ethnic Disparities. In: Handler, A., Kennelly, J., Peacock, N. (eds) Reducing Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Reproductive and Perinatal Outcomes. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1499-6_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1499-6_6

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