Ibis Reproductive Health

CONTACT:

17 Dunster Street, Suite 201
Cambridge, MA 02138
617-349-0040
ibisreproductivehealth.org

Kelly Blanchard, MSc, President

DESCRIPTION:

One of the keys to the global liberation of women, besides education, is empowerment over their own reproductive health. Ibis was founded in 2002 by a young social scientist, Dr. Charlotte Ellertson, to connect and promote US and global reproductive health research, international public policy, and health care practice. Dr. Ellertson died of breast cancer in 2004, at the age of 38. Her institution lives on, and has become an international leader in its field. Her vision was a world in which all women would have access to the complete range of reproductive services and options. Ibis created the first Arabic-language websites on emergency contraception (EC) and medication abortion, now receiving over 300,000 visits annually. Ibis conducts and promotes research and distribution of safe medication abortion to women worldwide, with a focus on Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America, in addition to the US—they helped draft South Africa’s National Department of Health policy to include this procedure in free public sector services. Ibis has researched the safety of oral contraceptives and is promoting making them available over-the-counter; their research has been used in advocacy by Catholics for Choice, the National Women’s Law Center, Advocates for Youth, and the South Carolina Emergency Contraception Initiative. Ibis data on EC in hospital emergency rooms has informed the Emergency Contraception Education Act of 2007. All this has been accomplished by a relatively modest institution of 18 staffmembers. Here is where your investment can make a world-changing difference.

(2008: INTERNATIONAL)