ArticleReproductive health2024
How do BMI-restrictive policies impact women seeking NHS-funded IVF in the United Kingdom? A qualitative analysis of online forum discussions.
Article in Reproductive health, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Beyond the scale: navigating BMI, IVF candidacy, and retrieval settings through provider perspectives.Journal of assisted reproduction and genetics · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundAcross the United Kingdom's National Health Service (NHS), women with a Body Mass Index (BMI) of > 30 face restrictions accessing In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) treatment. This study asks: what are the (un)expected and (un)intended harms and consequences experienced by women restricted from accessing NHS-funded IVF due to BMI threshold criteria?
methodsPosts from a popular infertility online forum were collected and reflexively thematically analysed.
resultsOn the forum, users discussed how they struggled to lose weight, how they faced time pressures to meet BMI thresholds, and they shared knowledge on how to comply or appear compliant with BMI cut-offs. Our study found widespread moral discourses around body weight were reproduced in the forum, particularly commonplace narratives that body weight is under personal control, that people with a high BMI should 'work' to change their bodies, and that this work helps demonstrate deservingness for IVF treatment. Moralising discourses around weight were linked to the responsibilities of a hoped-for future of motherhood, as users performed deservingness through emphasising their commitment to meeting the BMI threshold.
conclusionWe conclude that NHS-IVF policies in the United Kingdom do not consider the burdensome emotional and moral work placed on people seeking treatment due to inflexible upper-limit BMI criteria.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.