{"id":15423,"date":"2021-06-16T09:47:32","date_gmt":"2021-06-16T13:47:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/?p=15423"},"modified":"2021-06-16T09:47:32","modified_gmt":"2021-06-16T13:47:32","slug":"increasing-access-to-ivf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/2021\/06\/increasing-access-to-ivf\/","title":{"rendered":"Increasing Access to IVF"},"content":{"rendered":"<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-15427\" src=\"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Micajah-McGarity_JHU4025-1024x682.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"682\" srcset=\"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Micajah-McGarity_JHU4025-1024x682.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Micajah-McGarity_JHU4025-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Micajah-McGarity_JHU4025-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Micajah-McGarity_JHU4025-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Micajah-McGarity_JHU4025.jpg 2000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/>\n<p>The COVID-19 stay-at-home orders in March 2020 shut down the research that Micajah McGarity, a PhD candidate in the <a href=\"https:\/\/ehe.jhu.edu\/graduate\/doctoral-programs\/doctor-of-philosophy-in-geography-and-environmental-engineering\/\">geography and environmental engineering program<\/a>, had been doing on the environmental health drivers of infertility. McGarity, MSE \u201912, had been focusing on creating optimization models to make fertility services more widely accessible.<\/p>\n<p>Then it hit him. His research could be used to help improve testing access for COVID-19. \u201cAt the time, there was a big need for improved access to COVID testing,\u201d says McGarity, the M. Gordon Wolman Fellow. \u201cI had the infrastructure in place, so I began searching for lists of drive-up COVID-19 testing centers across the country.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Using data from GoodRx, a website and mobile app that finds discount prices for medications, McGarity determined that opening 250 new center locations in optimal locations could extend drive-up testing to within a 60-minute drive for about 100 million people around the United States. He created the COVID-19 Drive-Up Testing Dashboard, hoping to provide information that would assist Johns Hopkins and other national public health agencies in responding to COVID-19.<\/p>\n<p>More recently, McGarity has returned to addressing disparities in fertility treatment access\u2014which is much more than an exercise in optimization methodology for him. He and his wife, Sara (who he met working in the same research group at Johns Hopkins), are among the approximately one in eight couples affected by infertility in the U.S. Their experience inspired McGarity\u2019s research focus when he enrolled in the Whiting School\u2019s part-time PhD program in the <a href=\"https:\/\/ehe.jhu.edu\">Department of Environmental Health and Engineering<\/a>. An operations research analyst at Johns Hopkins\u2019 Applied Physics Lab, McGarity uses the tools of optimization, probability, and statistics to improve the safety and security of U.S. Navy submarines.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy wife and I were lucky and didn\u2019t have issues accessing fertility care, but I learned that most couples in the U.S. are not so lucky, with only about 40% of demand met for in vitro fertilization,\u201d says McGarity, who holds a WSE\/APL Research Assistantship. \u201cOf the many barriers to access, I found that about 29% of those in the reproductive age population do not live in an area with an IVF clinic, and I knew that I could apply engineering to the challenge of increasing access.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He collected data from every U.S. fertility clinic to create the national\u00a0Fertility Clinic Finder. Currently, he\u2019s developing a dashboard like the one he created for COVID-19 testing locations to help existing and new reproductive endocrinologists determine the optimal placement of new clinics. The\u00a0McGaritys, who have two children, used his data to find a new clinic for continuing treatment once the clinic they were using closed permanently in summer 2020 due to the pandemic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Micajah McGarity, MSE \u201912, is focused on creating optimization models to make fertility services more widely accessible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":15427,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-students","issue-summer-2021"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Increasing Access to IVF - JHU Engineering Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/2021\/06\/increasing-access-to-ivf\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Increasing Access to IVF - 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