Research from University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Yields New Findings on Managed Care (Impacts of Medicaid Expansion on Contraceptive Use Among Women in Neighborhoods of Racialized Socioeconomic Deprivation in the United States): Managed Care

2025 OCT 23 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- Researchers detail new data in Managed Care. According to news reporting from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, by NewsRx journalists, research stated, “Medicaid expansion has the potential to increase access to contraception and improve women’s health, although existing research examining state-level variation provides mixed evidence. The neighborhood context plays a crucial role in understanding the effects of Medicaid expansion on contraceptive use, as structural inequalities within neighborhoods may shape access to health care and reproductive services.”

The news correspondents obtained a quote from the research from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, “We used a unique restricted dataset of 13,224 female respondents ages 15-44 years interviewed in the 2011-2019 waves of the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG). We merged these data with indicators of state Medicaid expansion status and respondents’ neighborhood context, operationalized as Index of Concentration at the Extremes (ICE) scores. We used quasi-experimental difference-in-differences models to assess if Medicaid expansion impacted provider-dependent contraceptive use and method type differentially by neighborhood-level context. We used multivariable linear probability and multinomial logistic regression models adjusting for individual and community covariates and state/region fixed effects. Living in a Medicaid expansion state was associated with significant increases in provider-dependent contraceptive method use among respondents in the most deprived neighborhoods (17.9 percentage points, 95% CI [9.0, 26.9], by 2017-2019). Specifically, long-acting reversible contraception (LARC) use increased 7.6 percentage points (95% CI [0.6-14.7]) and use of no method or barrier/coital methods declined 17.5 percentage points (95% CI [-26.3, -8.7]) among those in the most deprived neighborhoods by 2017-2019. Changes in state-level policies can have major impacts on health systems, but the example of Medicaid expansion underscores the differential impacts on people with less access to health resources, such as those living in structurally disadvantaged neighborhoods.”

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: “Ultimately, further expansion of Medicaid could facilitate access to the full range of contraceptive methods and advance population health equity in additional U.”

This research has been peer-reviewed.

For more information on this research see: Impacts of Medicaid Expansion on Contraceptive Use Among Women in Neighborhoods of Racialized Socioeconomic Deprivation in the United States. Womens Health Issues, 2025;35(5):314-323. Womens Health Issues can be contacted at: Elsevier Science Inc, Ste 800, 230 Park Ave, New York, NY 10169, USA.

Our news journalists report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Alice F. Cartwright, Dept. of Maternal and Child Health, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Additional authors for this research include Gustavo Angeles, Jessica Su, Maeve Wallace, Sian Curtis and Ilene S. Speizer.

Publisher contact information for the journal Womens Health Issues is: Elsevier Science Inc, Ste 800, 230 Park Ave, New York, NY 10169, USA.

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