The winter 2010 edition of Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics includes an article by Northwestern researchers Basco, Lisa Camp-Engelstein and Sarah Rodriguez titled "Insuring Against Infertility." The article grew out of Basco's six months of research with Northwestern's Oncofertility Consortium, where the social policy major studied health insurance laws that impact reproductive options for cancer patients.
The article discusses the mandates that many states have requiring health insurance companies to cover the costs of infertility treatments. These mandates are needed to expand to include fertility preservation treatments for cancer patients, according to the researchers. “One method of ensuring people in their reproductive years or children who are diagnosed with cancer have access to and insurance coverage for FPT is to legally treat them as a distinct group from people diagnosed with infertility," the researchers say. [Read the entire article and the associated blog.]
The Oncofertility Consortium, led by Theresa Woodruff within Feinberg School of Medicine, is a national, interdisciplinary initiative designed to explore the reproductive future of cancer survivors. The Consortium is supported by the National Institutes of Health.
Basco’s work with the Oncofertility Consortium also led to an invitation for him to present a poster at the national conference of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanity. He presented the poster, called “Limitations of Massachusetts' Mandate for Infertility Services,” in October.
Last year Basco worked closely with Campo-Engelstein and Rodriguez, senior research fellows at the Oncofertility Consortium and the Center for Bioethics, Science, and Society at Northwestern. “Throughout fall quarter I researched various federal and state health insurance mandates related to biotechnology, cancer, fertility and infertility to get a better idea of what legislation currently existed that could potentially apply to reproductive technologies for cancer patients. During winter quarter, with the help of Lisa and Sarah, I decided to focus my research on the Massachusetts health insurance mandate defining a medical definition of infertility to examine how the mandate was developed and enacted. Massachusetts's law was chosen as it currently has one of the most comprehensive mandates covering infertility services,” he notes.
Earlier, through Northwestern’s Public Health in Uganda program, the social policy senior also studied the prevention of diseases that plague disadvantaged people in Uganda. He spent time at the largest community-based HIV/AIDS research study and did a research project on Ugandan bioethics. “I learned a lot about the unique ethical situations that Ugandan doctors and nurses find themselves in when resources are severely limited and the cultural issues that can impact the choices parents make,” he says. While in Uganda, he worked with a nonprofit that runs an orphanage and outreach programs for street children.
This fall, Basco has been continuing his work in health policy at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). At NIH, he is helping to develop systems to measure the return on investments from federal research funding for health. He will return to Northwestern to complete his degree in 2011.
“My interests are health policy and bioethics,” says Basco, who is looking into PhD programs in health policy. “Health is fundamental for people and nations to thrive.”