Reimagining the Digital Journey for Health Information and Care

The Re/Imagination Lab is a non-profit organization that helps people find reproductive health information and care online.

We research and explore how people navigate a rapidly changing digital landscape, and design practical solutions that make access to health care more accurate, private, and equitable.

ABOUT THE LAB

The Re/Imagination Lab was founded in 2019 by Tom Subak, who served as Chief Strategy Officer at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, leading development of the world's largest digital reproductive health platform. Executive Director Shantha Susman came to the Lab in 2025 after a decade leading reproductive health, rights, and justice campaigns at BerlinRosen.

We focus on improving online access to abortion and other reproductive health care through state-of-the-art, ongoing research and analysis, testing strategies to improve access, advancing digital privacy for people seeking reproductive health care across the internet, and exploring ways to improve the journey of searching for abortion care online from start to finish.

THE PROBLEM AT HAND

Search results often turn up misleading answers. In the case of time-sensitive care like abortion, people have to leapfrog from website to website to find what they need. At the Lab, we are committed to making the online journey to care smoother.

People who need abortions not only have to contend with inhumane restrictions on care; they’re also navigating a rapidly shifting digital landscape.

Over 2.4 million people search online for abortion information and care each year. Increasingly, the tools they use are AI-powered, whether they’re actively seeking out AI chatbots like ChatGPT or Claude, or getting an AI Overview response to a Google search.

To answer abortion questions, AIs scrape information from a variety of websites, then have to make sense of conflicting or hard-to-understand data. This includes thousands of fake clinic websites that intentionally publish misleading information, or websites with outdated information, such as those that list clinics as open that may now be closed.

This means that many AI answers direct people to closed clinics, crisis pregnancy centers, that dissuade people from having abortions, say abortion is illegal or unavailable when it’s not, or leave out that people in all fifty states have the ability to order pills online or travel for care.

When looking for healthcare options, especially something as time-sensitive as abortion, this is unacceptable.

OUR STRATEGY

The Re/Imagination Lab examines how people actually search for health information, and experiments with ways to make the journey easier, faster, and better.

We approach this work with an aim to address the root causes of poor AI answers and online obstacles to abortion care.

Our work navigates three workstreams:

  1. Assessment of AI Systems

    We’re conducting ongoing measurement and testing of AI answers to reproductive health questions led by Re/Imagination Lab and Brown University’s Center for Technological Responsibility, Reimagination, and Redesign.

  2. Mapping the Journey to Care

    We utilize large-scale data and qualitative analysis to understand how people find information about reproductive healthcare, where they are misdirected, and how emerging AI tools influence what they see and believe. By revealing these patterns, we help the field design communication strategies, tools, and experiences that meet users where they are.

  3. Good Information Where People Can Find It

    To ensure accurate information can be found, trusted, and acted upon, we’ve published the Reproductive Health Knowledge Base. This site provides a unified, vetted source of truth to large language models so that AI engines can easily find and parse the information and produce accurate, helpful answers.

AI EXPERTISE

This work is led by an interdisciplinary team of nationally recognized AI researchers, experienced health platform builders, and senior security and privacy experts. Gabi Becher and Tom Subak of the Lab bring extensive experience in the design and use of AI systems in reproductive health contexts. Our AI expert partners include: