Estefania Miramontes Valdes
2019 Winner
Position: MD/ Community Outreach Specialist
Organization: Bayview Medical Center – Children’s Medical Practice, Centro SOL
Current Location: United States
Medical Doctor from Tec of Monterrey School of Medicine / MD
Additional Degrees and Certifications:
•Johns Hopkins University
-Epidemiology in Public Health Practice, 2017
-Foundations of Global Health, 2018
-Qualified Bilingual Staff (QBS), 2019
Family Planning National Training Center
-Family Planning Basics, 2018
-Quality Contraceptive Counseling and Education: A Client-Centered Conversation, 2018
Innovating Education in Reproductive Health (partnership with the ACOG LARC program)
-LARC insertion and removal series, 2019
-LARC counseling scenarios: initiation of shared decision-making process, 2019
UCSF & Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health
-An update on long-acting reversible contraception, 2019
“Dr. Miramontes Valdes is an applied investigator and active advocate for reproductive health at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. She has been instrumental in expanding access to family planning services for the uninsured community of Baltimore.
“– Nominator
Describe your contributions to and achievements in family planning.
In 2018, we identified through a clinic-based survey, that immigrant Latina women had unmet family planning needs. Recognizing these, I developed an innovative way of providing bilingual family planning counseling to adolescent patients, and mothers of patients in a pediatric outpatient clinic serving a high-volume of immigrant families. During the past 7 months, I have assisted over 300 women between the ages 13 and 40 years old in initiating a birth control method by providing quality and comprehensive contraceptive counseling and education. Since then, the clinic has increased its on-site LARC insertions rate for adolescent patients, and 65% of patient-mothers had received a LARC or permanent contraception trough my care coordination, despite the absence of health insurance coverage.
What sparked your passion for family planning?
As a medical student in the obstetrics service of a public hospital in Mexico, I assisted a 13-year-old mother during the delivery of her first child. This experience marked me. Now, in counseling underserved populations I have come to understand that the lack of knowledge, access, acceptability, and choice to birth control methods led to the pregnancy of this young patient. For this reason, I work to improve reproductive health literacy and contraceptive access in my community.
Give one or two examples of how you display leadership in your family planning work.:
Uninsured patients are not able to obtain birth control methods at my institution. My initial workaround was to serve as a liaison for patients contacting state-sponsored or non-profit family planning clinics in the city, establishing a referral process to connect them with these resources and built a network of clinician leaders to provide successful services. I also plan monthly meetings to review available resources, coordinate screening efforts and amplify our impact on the community.
If you are named a winner of 120 under 40, how will you use this new platform and the $1000 grant to advance your work?
Obtaining the recognition of the Institute will heighten awareness of our work, and strengthen grant applications that we are preparing to expand family planning services at our clinic, and in other clinics or organizations as well. I will use this platform to network with other family planning leaders within the ‘120 under 40’ distinction. These funds would be used to acquire more bilingual educational material, to improve our counseling, and promote our services in community events.
Video Introduction
Photos of the nominee in the field/at work
