Observation of Infertility Among Reproductive Aged Women

Many women who are among the reproductive ages in America experience infertility or impaired fecundity. Infertility for those who are unaware is the failure to reproduce throughout the duration of 12 months, and impaired fecundity is a woman who is neither infertile nor can she carry a pregnancy to the expected date. Throughout the duration of the experiment an understandable public health, approach is tested including monitoring, to explore and better understand avoidable risk factors to care among these women. Although women being infertile may seem like a big deal in our day -to -day lives, not much research has been done on the topic.

Research

The researchers from The Journal of Women’s Health are trying to test the differences among a woman’s inability to stay pregnant, infertility, and a woman who has no problems conceiving or staying pregnant, by using self-provided information via a telephone survey among seven states: Connecticut, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Ohio, Texas, and Utah. The research was provided by the seven states, with a questionnaire using estimates from the years of 2011-2013. However, due to faulty state systems lacking, the telephone survey system Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) was used to provide the information analyzed. “Variables used in the raking process included categories of age, race, and ethnicity groups, marital status, education levels, and telephone source” (Sara Crawford, PhD, 2017, 501).

Women among the ages 18-50 among the seven states who opted in the telephone survey were set into different categories for the trial, this included; “categories of age, race, and ethnicity groups, marital status, education levels, and telephone source” (Sara Crawford, PhD, 2017, 501). Among the seven state’s there were 8691 women who met this age criteria (18-50) and were asked the 2013 (BRFSS) reproductive health questions such as if they’d had hypertension, diabetes, and/or a problem with smoking. By excluding (14.6%) of the women due to various reasons a total of 7422 women. “386 ever experiencing infertility only, 337 ever experiencing difficulty staying pregnant only, and 6699 never experiencing infertility or difficulty staying pregnant.” (Sara Crawford, PhD, 2017, 502). However, women who have had no difficulty either staying pregnant or being infertile were only included in the secondary outcome.

With another round of exclusions throughout the duration of the experiment (Article never states duration of experiment) only “689 women, 349 receiving any treatment and consultation only (301 and 48, respectively), and 340 never seeking any treatment were used for the data” (Sara Crawford, PhD, 2017, 502). The differences of the women who participated in the surveys were tested using chi square tests and CIs for proportions. As a result, “The overall percentage of women reporting infertility only was 4.8% (95% CI = 3.6–6.3), with state-specific values ranging from 3.1% (95% CI = 2.0–4.8) in Connecticut to 6.1% (95% CI = 4.7–7.8) in Utah. The overall percentage reporting difficulty staying pregnant only was 4.0% (95% CI = 3.1–5.2), with state-specific estimates ranging from 3.2% (95% CI = 1.8–5.8) in Texas to 5.2% (95% CI = 3.5–7.5) in Ohio” (Sara Crawford, PhD, 2017, 503). Throughout all the women who qualified for the trial, women seeking treatment was 334,147 (35.8%), whereas the weighted number of women seeking treatment was 459,790 (49.3%).

Conclusion

In conclusion, I believe this research has helped provide a better insight for women seeking to reproduce providing them with information that was otherwise unknown. Not only has this research given us a better insight on how women are ranked with many different groups and variables including age, ethnicity, marriage status, etc., it also shines light on a topic that was not yet explored in the health community, but ignored. I, myself have many family members who have suffered with infertility, and the inability to conceive and this research provides much needed date on the topic, including the effects of what a women does, for example smoking, does to her body.                               

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