Gulf Pine Catholic

Gulf Pine Catholic • August 2, 2024 11 One Catholic physician’s journey to becoming a Natural Family Planning advocate BY CHARLIE CAMOSY OSV News Amid the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Natural Family Planning Awareness Week, Dr. Marguerite Duane, a board-certified family physician, spoke with OSV News ’ Charlie Camosy about her work as co-founder and executive director of FACTS about Fertility , an organization dedicated to educating medical professionals and students about the scientific evidence supporting fertility awareness-based methods (FABMs). -- Charlie Camosy: “NFP Week” is here. Can you tell us a bit about your personal journey that led you to being such an import- ant voice for natural family planning? -- Marguerite Duane: I first learned about NFP as a first-year family medicine resident in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. One night, as I was required to write birth control prescriptions for patients, my supervising resident, Dr. Pearl Huang, discussed the importance of consider- ing the impact of conventional birth control methods, including side effects. To my sur- prise, she then told me about evidence-based natural methods that equip women to manage their fertility without any medical side effects. I was stunned. As a physician and a cradle Catholic, how had I graduated from medical school having never learned this? That conversation would change the trajectory of my entire career, as I began learning more about NFP. I learned the Family of the Americas method to monitor my own cycle and address menstrual health concerns. Then, when my husband and I got mar- ried, we used the Sympto-Thermal Method to plan our family. Later exposure to the Creighton Model opened my eyes to the possibilities of charting not only for family planning, but also to address wom- en’s health issues. In 2010, I developed an elective on NFP to teach to a small group of medical students at Georgetown University. Since the course was so well received, I became determined to integrate this vital informa- tion into medical education. That same year, I col- laborated with Dr. Bob Motley to found an initiative that has now grown into its own nonprofit organiza- tion, F ACTS About Fertility . At FACTS , our mission is to educate both current and future medical profes- sionals about the effectiveness and applications of natural and fertility awareness-based methods for family planning and women’s health conditions. -- Camosy: I get the sense that there is tremen- dous interest in NFP when folks really take a Dr. Marguerite Duane, a board-certified family physician, is pictured in an undated photo. OSV News photo/courtesy Dr. Mar- guerite Duane chance to dig in and learn about it. This includes, for lack of a better way of saying it, more liberal or progressive folks who one might not expect to be interested. Is that your sense as well? -- Duane: Absolutely. There is tremendous inter- est in what we commonly refer to as FABMs. The term “fertility awareness-based methods” highlights the broad applications of these methods beyond fam- ily planning to management of myriad women’s health concerns. In 2016, the American College of OB-GYNs issued a statement recognizing the menstrual cycle as a vital sign of health and recommended young women track their cycles beginning in adolescence. Understanding the female cycle and learning to track the biomarkers is empowering, attracting people from various backgrounds due to the lack of side effects, synthetic hormones, and environmental effects. One testimony stands out from a former FACTS elective student. Health-conscious, she exercised daily and ate organic, hormone-free foods but in her efforts to avoid hormones in her food, she had never considered the effects of daily consuming a pill full of synthetic hormones! As a physician, it is important to promote the evidence for these methods to ensure wide- spread access to valuable information for wom- en’s health. FABMs should be accessible to all women of reproductive age, regardless of reli- gion, race, language, economic or marital sta- tus. -- Camosy: Despite this level of interest, it doesn’t appear that today’s health care professionals have enough training or even basic knowledge of NFP. Would you also agree with this? -- Duane: Yes, medical professionals have limited knowledge about NFP, which is why we established FACTS -- to educate the medi- cal community about the science behind these methods. A study in 2010 revealed that only 3-6% of family physicians and OBGYNs were familiar with modern NFP methods such as the Billings Ovulation and Sympto-Thermal Methods. This lack of knowledge is concern- ing, as professionals are responsible for provid- ing family planning options to patients. In a 2015 FACTS study, we identified less than 600 physicians in the U.S. and Canada with basic knowledge of NFP or FABMs, despite there being over 300 million people in the U.S. We are working to address this knowl- edge gap. Since 2018, FACTS has educated nearly a thousand medical, nursing, and health professional students on evidence-based FABMs. Even the pan- demic didn’t slow our progress -- our medical elec- tive course was already online. We also offer online continuing medical educa- tion courses and host conferences, both in-person and virtually, to further educate medical profession- als, FABM educators, and the general community about the importance of FABMs in women’s health care. Our next virtual conference will take place Oct. 18-19. -- Camosy: What can be done to address this problem? What can the church do? What about legislation? -- Duane: FACTS is devoted to bridging medical professionals’ knowledge gap regarding the science supporting these methods, primarily through our elective, continuing medical education course and conferences. As of last year, we have partnered with several nursing schools to integrate fertility aware- ness education, and we are delighted to work with organizations such as Ascension Health and OSF to make this information more readily available to their clinicians. SEE NFP WEEK CAMOSY DOCTOR Q&A, PAGE 14