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A proactive approach to long-acting contraceptive use in teens

Embargoed until: Publicly released:

About 40 per cent of Kiwi teens aged 16 to 19 say they've had sex, but many rely on contraceptive methods that aren't very effective, like condoms and the oral contraceptive pill (13 per cent and 7 per cent failure rate respectively). Given more than 90 per cent of adolescent pregnancies are unintended, researchers talked to a group of teenage girls to gauge their knowledge and interest in long-acting contraceptives, like intrauterine devices or implants. They found the teens had some common misconceptions and concerns about the devices - such as whether the implant left an obvious scar - but they were more supportive once they knew more about them.

Journal/conference: New Zealand Medical Journal

Organisation/s: University of Otago

Media Release

From: New Zealand Medical Association (NZMA)

Key points

  1. Adolescent use of long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs) in New Zealand is low, even though LARCs are recommended for this population.

  2. We suggest a proactive LARC provision (PLP) approach to increase LARC uptake in the adolescent population.

  3. We approached female adolescents in a focus group setting to see if they found this concept acceptable – they did find this concept acceptable when fully explained.

  4. Adolescents have many different opinions about sexual health and contraceptives, and the adolescents in our study were interested to learn more about these topics.

ENGLISH SUMMARY

Some New Zealand adolescents are sexually active, and of those adolescents who are having sex, some are using contraceptive methods with high typical use failure rates, and some are using no contraception at all. Long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs) are intrauterine devices (IUDs) and implants, a group of contraceptive methods that are 22 times as effective as the pill. We suggested a provision model where adolescents would be offered LARCs proactively and consulted with four focus groups of female adolescents to assess whether they found this model to be acceptable. The adolescents were positive about this concept, and described a range of barriers that currently prevent them from accessing effective contraception.

News for:

New Zealand

Multimedia:

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    Rebecca Duncan

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    Last modified: 18 Jan 2019 12:19am

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