Twice a month, a 40-foot-long truck transformed into a mobile clinic travels the Rio Grande Valley to provide rural Texans with women's health care, including birth control. The clinic, called the UniMóvil, is part of the Healthy Mujeres program at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley School of Medicine. The U.
S. has about 3,000 mobile health programs. But Saul Rivas, an OB-GYN, said he wasn't aware of any that shared the specific mission of Healthy Mujeres when he helped launch the initiative in 2017.
"Mujeres" means "women" in Spanish. It's now part of a small but growing number of mobile programs aimed at increasing rural access to women's health services, including long-acting reversible contraception. There are two kinds of these highly effective methods: intrauterine devices, known as IUDs, and hormonal implants inserted into the upper arm.
These birth control options can be especially difficult to obtain — or have removed — in rural areas. "Women who want to prevent an unintended pregnancy should have whatever works best for them," said Kelly Conroy, senior director of mobile and maternal health programs at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. The school is launching a mobile women's health and contraception program in rural parts of the state this month.
Rural areas have disproportionately fewer doctors, including OB-GYNs, than urban areas. And rural providers may not be able to afford to stock long-acting birth control devices or may not be tra.
