Welcome to Black Feminist Rants where we center conversations on Reproductive Justice and activism. I'm your host LaKia Williams. And let's begin. Welcome back to another episode of Black Feminist Rants. Thank y'all so much for tuning in. In today's episode, I got to sit down with the New York Birth Control Access Project, which is a nonprofit organization dedicated to identifying gaps in contraceptive access. Now, if you know, you know this is something that's really dear to me. I actually got my start in Reproductive Justice through contraceptive access program creation and organizing. So this is something that I hold very close to me. And I'm super excited for this episode, I got to sit down with Rochelle, who is the Director of Advocacy, and she's a Black woman doing amazing work in New York to ensure that people on the ground are having access to contraceptive care that they are entitled to. So without further ado, let's get right into this episode. So first, thank you so much for joining me for this episode of Black Feminist Rants to start us off, can you introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, your title, and just anything about yourself that you would like to add?
Hi, so my name is Rochelle Rodney, my pronouns are she/her. I'm the Director of Advocacy at the New York Birth Control Access Project. And I'm excited to be on this call.
Yes, thank you. I'm excited to have you. So you mentioned that you work at the New York Birth Control Access Program. Can you give us a brief description of the organization and the type of work that you all do?
So our, um, the New York Birth Control Access Project is an organization where we work to increase access to birth control all across New York state. And our access project deals with all of the grassroots organizing and advocacy work, where we have a group of young people that is a part of our access project that helps to push our initiatives to make birth control more accessible in New York.
I definitely love the fact that you'll have like the youth-centered advocacy. And before we get into that, can you just talk a little bit about why birth control access is so important and why you do the work that you do?
So a lot of people think that birth control access is super easy in New York state. And it's honestly not. There are so many barriers to birth control in all different parts of the state. So it can either be the cost of birth control, people not [having] insurance, people can not have the funds to travel to their nearest providers, or people have like religious backgrounds that probably affect them accessing birth control, because it's seen as a stigmatizing topic. There are many barriers to birth control all across New York state. And we want to help to alleviate those barriers with the different projects that we work on and initiatives.
Thank you. Can you talk a little bit about the different projects that you have to kind of address some of these barriers?
Yes. So I think one of the projects that definitely excites people when we talk about it is our project to get emergency contraceptives placed in vending machines in public areas. We are starting with college campuses because we feel like it's honestly a group that is reflected by our organization through our Associate Board. So having our Associate Board go out and speak to young people on their campus and speak to the administration on their campus, about having emergency contraception in vending machines is one thing that we're really pushing for because it's going to increase access. It's going to be affordable aand in a convenient location where young people are able to get a bag of chips and then they can also get their EC and not have to talk to somebody about it. And especially since EC or emergency contraception is over-the-counter, this is something that shouldn't be such a hard lift for us. So that's one thing that we're working on. But we also are working on getting pharmacists the ability to prescribe birth control, or dispense birth control through a non-patient specific standing order. That's something that we pushed really hard for this year. It didn't get all the way passed. But we are hoping that next year, this is a possibility for New York state. There's about like 24 other states that are doing this, except for New York state. And we think that it's time for New York state to step up and make this available for New Yorkers. So those are two major things. And then we also have a smaller group that is working with our Access Project, in order to figure out what does birth control access look like in foster care, because that was a topic that one of our Associate Board members were extremely interested in. So they decided to pursue that and figure out what does birth control access look like? And is there a way that organization can help? So those are three overarching things that we are currently working on at NYBCAP.
Yeah, first of all, just thank you for all the work that you do. And I know that I was super interested in, you know, you and the work that you're doing around the emergency contraceptive vending machine, because that's actually how I got my start in Reproductive Justice. So I was a college student on my campus and just saw a need for, you know, plan B or emergency contraception and created like a peer-to-peer distribution program. And one of the goals was to get EC vending machines, which turned out to be like a large lift just as, like, youth-created programming and stuff. And so that's something that I, you know, since I've graduated, I really hope that the younger generation can kind of like push forward and, you know, continue to do and get that on campus. So I definitely understand like the amount of work that goes into it and like how much advocacy young people have to do to get things like that. So it's really cool that, you know, your organization is supporting the young people to get these, get these things on the campus. So I really commend that. I really appreciate that you're doing that work. But I also wanted to just kind of pick your brain a little bit more about the pharmacists' ability to dispense birth control. Can you go into depth about what that whole process is? And like how it's different from getting a prescription from a doctor?
Yes, for sure. Thank you also for the work that you have been doing, and you're pushing an EC place in vending machines. I do hope that we'll be able to make that a reality pretty soon. And then we can update you about that. And in terms of what is the difference. So usually what people are used to is going to their providers to get a prescription for birth control, and then taking that prescription from their provider and going to their pharmacy and saying, Hey, I have this prescription, can you fill my prescription? Now what we want to do is eliminate the provider because it's not necessary. We have the American College of OB-GYN and that place that put out a memo saying, We just linked the fact that we go to our providers to get prescriptions before going to the pharmacy to get our prescription filled, when in some cases it's not absolutely necessary, just like this case. So essentially, what would happen now is that a patient like myself would be able to walk into my pharmacy, and then talk to my pharmacist about the large range of birth control options that I have, or contraception options. And once I finish hearing about all the different forms of contraception, I can decide, hey, I think I want to be on a self-administered form of birth control, such as the pills or like patch. And I would be able to get my name placed on a patient-specific standing order, much like the flu shot, and just walk out with my birth control that day. Now, if I decided that I wanted a form of birth control that is not self-administered, such as the IUD or the implant, the implant that goes in your arm, then they would then refer me out to a provider, and I would have to go to my provider first. And then I can also get my- I can't get we won't be able to get our IUDs or implants placed at the pharmacist, we have to go to our providers. So it's really just for self-administered birth control that people are capable of using for themselves.
Thank you for that. I wasn't familiar with that even being an option. So that's like, definitely helpful to know it. So can you talk a little bit about how this form of getting access to birth control is different from the advocacy for over-the-counter birth control?
Yes, so I'm happy that you asked about that question. So our organization, we believe that more is more. We want to have over-the-counter contraception. We want you to be able to walk into your pharmacy and pick up birth control over the counter. But we also want you to be able to go to your pharmacy and be able to get that consultation about different forms of birth control. And also get your birth control that you want from your pharmacist without having to go to your provider, without having to make extra appointments, without having to have different barriers. Because as a very busy young woman, it's hard to find time in my schedule to make time to go to my provider, and then I probably would have to do that on a lunch break, then I would have to go back the next day or a couple of days later to go to my pharmacy just to pick up my prescription because I don't have the time to. So it was really just to eliminate that time of going to your provider and having that couple of minutes conversation when you could be doing that at your pharmacy. And also this will also be teaching pharmacists how to speak more in depth about contraception with the people that are walking into their pharmacies. And that's really the biggest changes about that. But we love over-the-counter contraception. We just think that there should be more and that pharmacist should be able to provide more information about contraception as well.
Yeah, I think that's a really great point that, you know, different people are going to have different needs, and someone, you know, may have been on birth control before and they might know exactly what they want. So they can just go in and get it off the counter and then someone might need like that contraceptive counseling and having that pharmacists be trained to provide that would be like super helpful for them. So I definitely love that you brought that up. And also, to the point about not having time and being, you know, a young busy Black woman, these doctors be- you gotta wait a month just to go see your primary care provider, there be like these waits. And just like all of us, I know for me at least, I had to wait like two months just to get on birth control. So just, that's like, that's definitely a barrier, especially if you need just for all types of reasons basically. But yeah, I definitely like how you can just go to like a Walgreens or CVS, because those are typically way more frequent, frequent frequent in communities versus, you know, there's not a health clinic on every, in every neighborhood as there should be. So I definitely like that it increases accessibility in that manner.
I 100% agree. And in addition to that, more than likely they are- the pharmacies are closer to people than their providers are. Like, in order to get to my primary care doctor, I pass about like, six pharmacies. So if I was able to just walk a couple blocks to my pharmacy and get the consultation, pick up my birth control, that would save me an entire, like, 30-minute bus ride or a five-stop train ride in NYC. So I definitely walk past way more pharmacies than I do, like, providers, and I'm just more comfortable going to my primary care provider than constantly switching. So I would always try to like go straight to my primary care. But if I can go to the pharmacy, I would rather just do that.
Right. And then you can kind of like just get past like the co-pays, and like all these other fees of like going to see a provider just go straight to the pharmacist. So yeah, I'm definitely seeing how this is just like alleviating a whole bunch of barriers for people. So that's, that's really important. One other thing I wanted to touch on was just to like pick your brain about how you're supporting young people to advocate for birth control access. And you kind of mentioned this a little bit with the EC but just in general, how are you, like, galvanizing young people to kind of do this work?
So I mentioned the Associate Board, but I didn't really give you a, like, well-rounded understanding of what that is. So our Associate Board is filled with young people, about 18 to 25 years old. Alot of them are college students, most of them are college students. And when they come in, they're very excited about birth control. And when we talk to them about the different ways they can get involved to increase access, a lot of them lean towards the policy side of the work that we do. So what our Executive Director, Jenna Bimbi, and I decided to do is to train them on how to lobby, on how to speak to legislators, on how policy impacts people in their communities. Because a lot of the people on our Board have never went and spoken to their legislators, didn't even know that they can go and talk to their legislators to begin with. So what we do is we put them through a month-long training, where we teach them about grassroots organizing, lobbying, communications, birth control 101, Reproductive Justice. We just give them a well rounded understanding of why is this something that we are interested in, and how they can help their communities to get their access to birth control. So we put them through that training. And then we give them the opportunity to go and meet with their legislators and talk about their communities and talk about what is it that they would like to see changed and how can birth control access change their lives and the people around them lives. And I think that that was a very powerful thing for them. Because now once our Associate Board ends, we usually do them based on like semesters of college. So we just finished up our spring cohort of our Associate Board. And the feedback that we've been getting from the young people is, wow, we didn't know this was a thing. We didn't even know jobs like this exists. We didn't know that we had the power to change laws in this type of way. A great part of the reason why we do what we do is because of the reaction from the young people in our Associate Board. They love it, they love to do policy work, they want to be more engaged. They weren't taught in school that they can get engaged on this type of level. So just giving them the opportunity to see that they have the power to go into their legislators offices, sit down, and speak to them about what they would like to see and actually be heard has been very powerful. So we are going to definitely continue to do that. And we are not like a work development organization. But they just continue to gain different skills from going through the process with us that I think people can definitely see translate through the work that they do and the excitement on their faces when they're doing the work with us.
Yeah, I feel like there's a lot of advocating for young people that happens and not so much, you know, equipping young people with the tools to advocate for themselves. And I think that's really important. And I feel like that'll show up in the advocacy, you know, when the when the young people can go to the legislature and tell them and speak of their own experiences versus having you know, Millennials and Boomers speak on their behalf, and I feel like that would have a different impact. So I'm really happy that you're doing it. I'm really happy that also that the young people are saying that you know, this is beneficial and I enjoyed this and I'm learning so it's definitely helping with like that professional development as well.
I do want to kind of circle back to what you said about emergency contraceptives and vending machines and how I spoke about that us helping the young people see that they are equipped to do things like this. So with that campaign, what we also do is we give the power to the young people. We let them contact the administration's office, we help them set up the meetings, and then we prep them before the meetings, and then we sit in the meetings, obviously, tech support them, and to help them in like different areas where they might not know the answer to certain questions. But it's really just putting the power back in the young people's hands. Because when everyone that is older is gone, they're the people that have to deal with these issues. They're the ones that are going to need the access. So having the young people realize they can speak up for themselves in this way has been very powerful. And I completely agree that giving the young people the tools and educating them and letting them go out to do work is going to be life changing, not only for them but their peers around them as well.
Definitely, because it's going to be like a domino effect that, like you said, their peers are going to see them advocating. And be like, Okay, well, this is accessible to me, too. I can also advocate. And it'll just be like a snowball effect. And everyone's going to be advocating and showing up for community, which is, you know, going to be awesome of course. So I did want to ask you, do you have any upcoming projects or events or initiatives that the NYBCAP is working on that you want to highlight?
So we are having some events in the summer time. We are planning those events out currently. But we consistently have events throughout the year, where our young people are planning to host something called mixers, where they bring a group of their friends. And they do peer-to-peer education, about birth control access and birth control in general, along with the work that our organization does, so that just happens throughout the year. But our application for our next Associate Board cohort is opening is actually open right now. And we plan to start back up in the fall.
Perfect. And is there any advice you would give to young people who might not be connected to an organization like yours on how to get involved in doing advocacy work or birth control advocacy specifically?
Honestly, I think that young people should definitely get involved. And they should look into community organizations that are in their neighborhoods that they want to take part in, that is doing work that interests them. So if it's birth control access, and there's something going on in their community surrounding it, to go and ask questions, to ask them how can I be a part of this organization? How can I help you do the work that you do, because this is something that I'm interested in. So just like seeing when there's an opportunity to participate in something that you really care about, to just take the leap and take take that chance to ask the questions and get involved with our organization. And it could be also national organizations, but just doing the research and finding out like, what was it that you're interested in, what type of change you want to make, and pursuing that.
Yeah, that's good advice. And they can just, you know, start out as a volunteer or just showing up to organizations' initiatives or their events and just kind of showing face and like speaking to people and talking about their interests and kind of get acclimated to the organization that way, and then you know, get more involved. So I think that's a great advice. So thank you for sharing all that with us. Do you have any next steps planned for, you know, next phases of advocacy for the birth control or the emergency contraceptive vending machines?
Yes. So I think that we pretty much have our program where we're training the young people to do like the lobbying down pat. That program is called our legislative education and advocacy program. But we are planning to revamp our emergency contraceptive in vending machines campaign this year. Earlier, you mentioned how leaving the campaign that you was working on, you were hoping that the peers were able to continue to do the peer-to-peer work and keep that initiative going. So we want this initiative on our end to just run on its own, we don't want the students to have to continuously be a factor in the process. We want this to be a situation where the school is- the school connects with their vending machine companies. And they're able to consistently keep this going through the school and the vending machines' relationship, instead of having like a student staff that is handling the initiative. So that's one thing that we're pushing more towards this year. And just making sure that each young people on our Associate Board will be able to get through to administration and speak to them and possibly have them say yes to our campaign is what we're really hoping for.
Great. That's awesome. Have you gotten any vending machines in schools yet? Are you working to get the first one set up right now?
Yeah, so we are currently working to get it set up. As you said, it was definitely a harder lift than what we imagined. So our first run we were just really trying to figure out like, where is our- what is our footing in this space? Can we even do this? How are the different ways that we can approach this? And we've tried different ways but now that we've had the experience of like trying and certain things not working out, we have a more clear plan of what we want to do and what we would need to do to move forward. So we are still working to get our first place.
That's great. I'm glad to hear it. Yeah, I know it's definitely- it can be like a big push to get it off the ground. So it looks like you've gotten past like that big hump. And now you're just like in the grind mode. So I definitely hope it works out and we can get some more access to young people to, you know, plan be and emergency contraceptive.
I do. Thank you so much.
Of course. Well, thank you for joining me and just educating us all, especially on that pharmacist-dispensed birth control. I had no idea about that. So thank you for educating me on that. And then just all the work that you're doing. And of course, just thank you in general for you know, supporting young people and supporting Reproductive Justice and access to birth control. This was fun though. I'm glad you came.
No problem. Thank you. I'm happy that you were able to have me on and I really can't wait to continue to see what you do and hear more about your work and see where you go. So thank you.
Of course. Thank you. Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of Black Feminist Rants. Be sure to check the show description for links on how to support the work that Rochelle is doing, as well as ways to support contraceptive access in general. And as usual, follow us on Instagram, Tik Tok, Twitter, Facebook, sign up for our newsletter, and I will talk to y'all soon.
