Keynote Address:

Stronger Together: Leveraging Our Collective Strength (Clare Coleman)

Your work as sexual and reproductive health providers continue to be challenged, scrutinized, and reshaped, even as the needs of Massachusettsans continue to grow. It can feel exhausting to carry both the urgency of now and the uncertainty of what comes next. Join NFPRHA’s President & CEO Clare Coleman who will kick off the symposium grounding us in the evolving landscape of the family planning safety net. Together, we will reflect on how we can leverage our strengths, support one another, and stay resilient in the face of transformation. This session will be a call to reconnect with why we do this work, recognize the collective impact we continue to make, and get energized as we push forward remembering that even in challenging times, your work matters deeply and so do you.

Morning Sessions:

Abortion Landscape Updates in 2026: National and Regional Perspectives (Dr. Elizabeth Janiak & WeCount)

In this session, participants will learn about abortion access and utilization, new trends, and emerging patient needs in 2026. We will begin with a brief overview of key recent legislative changes in states where abortion is and is not currently legal, and a review of legality and restrictions in New England. Dr. Jenny O’Donnell will present national data on interstate travel for abortion and use of telehealth. Dr. Elizabeth Janiak will provide an overview of abortion access and provision in Massachusetts. We will then discuss patient needs in the current landscape, with a focus on how participants can support their patients with quality referrals and how the broader healthcare community can work together to improve access.

Bedroom, Bathroom, & Beyond: Your one stop shop for managing pelvic floor concerns across age, gender, and more (Alicia Jeffrey-Thomas)

Pelvic floor dysfunction impacts people across the population, regardless of childbearing status, age, and gender.  Incontinence, prolapse, and pelvic pain can significantly diminish a person’s quality of life, and yet, the medical system still regularly dismisses these concerns as “normal”.  Learn about how the pelvic floor entwines with various medical specialties as well as simple educational interventions to improve patients’ body awareness and health.

Tender Echoes: The Art of Deep Listening (Amir Dixon)

Tender Echoes: The Art of Deep Listening is a 90-minute interactive workshop designed for the Reproductive Justice Symposium. This session uses film, somatic reflection, and art-based storytelling to build deep listening skills among health center staff—with an explicit focus on how those skills must be practiced differently, and more intentionally, when serving Black Queer and Trans communities.

Reproductive justice, as defined by SisterSong, is the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities. For Black Queer and Trans people, this framework is not abstract—it is lived, contested, and often invisible within the very systems designed to provide care. This workshop asks health center staff to confront that invisibility by listening differently. Participants leave with a deep listening framework rooted in the lived experience of Black Queer and Trans communities. Not theoretical. Felt. Something they practiced with their bodies, not just their notebooks. And a commitment, written in their own hand, to listen differently when it matters most.

“Reproductive justice is not just about what we provide. It’s about who we hear.”

Cultivating Birthlooms Storytellers: Storytelling as Healing, Memory, and Reproductive Justice Practice (Stefanie Belnavis) 

This session centers Stefanie's work as a perinatal movement psychotherapist and photographer, exploring storytelling as a vital practice of healing, memory preservation, and cultural reclamation, particularly within Black and Brown birthing communities. Grounded in her work through A Bucket for the Well, LLC, The Diahann Project, and Birthlooms, she will share the origins and evolution of Midwifery + The Black Birthing Family (MBBF) and the Birthlooms Storytellers Circle framework.

Participants will be invited to consider how storytelling, through movement, oral history, visual archiving, and reflective practice, can support culturally responsive, trauma-informed, and community-rooted approaches to perinatal and reproductive justice care. This work positions birthing people and practitioners as co-journeyers, storytellers and archivists of lived experience, holding space for both individual and collective healing.

Drawing from the Birthlooms Storytellers Circle process, which invites participants to engage their bodies, histories, and identities as sites of meaning-making and witnessing, this session will also include brief experiential elements and selected clips from Origin Stories: Midwifery + The Black Birthing Family to ground the work in lived narrative and testimony.

Afternoon Sessions:

Best Practices Serving Immigrants: What to Know (Jessica Chicco)

This session introduces participants to common challenges and barriers of effective service provision to immigrants and will facilitate a conversation on best practices for organizations to follow to build strong, trusting relationships with immigrant clients. We will also share accurate, up-to-date information on changes in immigration policies and their impact on our Massachusetts communities.

Love, Media, and Messaging: How Youth Use Marketing to Redefine Healthy Relationships (StartStrong) 

How do we create environments where young people can openly talk about sex, relationships, and consent without stigma? This session explores how youth-centered communication and restorative justice principles can transform the way we approach sexual health and healthy relationship education. Drawing from their experiences producing podcasts, leading workshops, and creating youth-led marketing content, the panel will highlight how storytelling, media, and digital engagement can expand conversations about healthy love.

Menopause Equity: Ensuring Access to Care and Countering Misinformation (Dr. Padma Kandadai)

This session will discuss the history of hormone therapy and how the Women's Health Initiative inadvertently created a care desert for several generations of women seeking help with perimenopausal and menopausal symptoms. In the absence of access to evidence-based care and practitioners confident to provide that care, a global market to fill this gap formed, estimated to be worth more than $24 billion USD by 2030. We will discuss how the monetization of menopause creates an environment ripe with misinformation aimed at consumerism and putting patients desperate for solutions, in their crosshairs.

Coming soon!

We are proud to be hosted at a venue with substantial accessibility features. To be respectful of those with allergies and environmental sensitivities, we ask participants to please refrain from wearing strong fragrances. Taking breaks and stepping away as needed is encouraged and respected throughout the day.

Attendees can request an accommodation or contact us for inquiries about accessibility to our email: trainingcenter@masrh.org.

Attendees can expect the following:

• Level/ramp-equipped entrances and all activities on the ground floor
• Fully AV-equipped meeting spaces with speakers using microphones at all times
• Fidget toys in breakout rooms
• Hand sanitizer, high-filtration masks, and COVID tests offered at check-in
• Hearing assistance devices available (please request when registering; these devices have a headphone that goes directly into your ear and has amplified audio)
• Printouts of presenter slides (please request when registering so we can use only the paper necessary)
• A private space for lactation on-site
• Gender-neutral restrooms
• A quiet space to take a break or step away
• Menstrual products available in the restrooms

We follow the MDPH guidance with regards to infection control and fully support any attendee who chooses to mask. If you have symptoms of a respiratory virus, such as a fever, sore throat, cough or a runny or stuffy nose, we kindly ask that you stay home. Contact us at trainingcenter@masrh.org for more information or questions.

Registration is live.

Space is limited and the form will close when the event has reached its maximum capacity, so please only register if you believe you can attend and contact the Training Center if you need to cancel so space can be offered to others.

Please email trainingcenter@masrh.org with any questions about the event.