Despite the frequency of unintended pregnancy and abortion, many nursing, nurse practitioner, and nurse-midwifery programs do not adequately prepare students to care for women. Factors such as lack of faculty qualified to teach about reproductive options, fear of anti-choice backlash, and the absence of appropriate didactic materials have been identified as barriers to incorporating this important subject into existing curricula. The Reproductive Options Education Consortium for Nursing (the ROE Consortium) is a group of nursing faculty that seeks to address the gaps in reproductive options curricula at nursing programs so that millions of women of all ages will receive better quality, more accessible comprehensive reproductive health care.  The ROE Consortium culls resources to be integrated into curricula and provides support for nursing faculty, as well as raises awareness of the absence of reproductive health content in nursing programs.

AAP continues to be one of the only reproductive health organizations addressing the enormous field of nursing education.  The ROE Consortium fills a critical void in nursing education by providing training, materials, support and leadership to promote reproductive options in the curricula of programs nationwide. In the consortium’s efforts to improve the training of nursing students and research on nurses’ role in reproductive healthcare, the group provides leadership to advance quality and access to comprehensive reproductive health services for women in across the country.