by Sinead Cook People who attend Sexual Assault Referral Centres (SARCs) have a variety of acute and longer-term sexual health and contraceptive needs. In Cardiff, we introduced a local policy in 2017 that aimed to ensure high-quality immediate care within the SARC and onwards referral to the local integrated sexual health clinic. A year later, […]
Category: Contraceptive methods
Who is using emergency contraception in Wales and why? Reflections on 5-years of the service
By Efi Mantzourani, Andrew Evans, and Cheryl Way The bigger picture in the Welsh strategy Access to Emergency Contraception (EC) has been a core component of attempts to address high teenage pregnancy rates in Wales. In 2011, the Welsh Government directed local health boards to commission a national EC service from community pharmacies (CPs) […]
Medical devices and the legacy of the Dalkon Shield: The struggle for evidence-based contraception
Evidence from Natsal-3 published in BMJ Sexual and Reproductive Health showed that women need contraception from doctors, but men largely get it from the shops. For many of us, this kind of disparity tends to set off our sexism alarms. In some ways the results are a natural consequence of biological differences. Men tend to […]
Bad Tweets: Reflections on @BMJ_SRH’s mentions
Sexual and reproductive health provokes the kind of righteous anger that Twitter thrives on. By trying to provide a beacon of nuance and open-mindedness we’re running against the grain, but I don’t always get that right so I have to take responsibility for some of the bad tweets posted on Twitter over the last month. […]
#DecolonisingContraception – The Importance of Preventing Unethical Practice in SRH and Learning from History
By Annabel Sowemimo Many times a week when I grab hold of a ‘Sims’ speculum (used in gynecology theatres across the world) I feel a shudder as I think of the legacy of J.Marion Sims, often nicknamed “the father of Gynaecology”. We can thank the many nameless Black American and poor women that Sims operated […]
Reproductive Health is a Public Health Issue
By Dr Sue Mann. Re-published with permission of FSRH. Dr Sue Mann and colleagues Monica Davison and Alison Hadley provide some background to the new suite of documents on reproductive health to be published by Public Health England (PHE). The documents will define the scope of reproductive health, provide a national overview of the current status […]
An Interview with Linda Pepper
Linda Pepper is the new patient editor at BMJ SRH. She has been a lay member of RCOG Women’s Network (WN) for 6 years, represented the WN on the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Health council and is a lay examiner and assessor for RCOG membership exams. She has dedicated her career to NHS patient […]
An Interview with Oskari Heikinheimo
Oskari Heikinheimo is professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of Helsinki. He is also a new associate editor on the board of BMJ SRH. Kate Womersley, BMJ SRH’s social media editor, caught up with Heikinheimo to hear about the political attitudes around abortion and contraception in Finland, conscientious objection and exciting research underway in the field. […]
An Interview with Dr. Abigail Aiken – Part 3
Abigail Aiken trained in clinical medicine at the University of Cambridge, before completing an MPH at Harvard School of Public Health, a PhD in public policy at the University of Texas at Austin, and a post-doc at the Office of Population Research at Princeton. She is now assistant professor at the LBJ School of Public […]
An Interview with Dr. Abigail Aiken – Part 2
Abigail Aiken trained in clinical medicine at the University of Cambridge, before completing an MPH at Harvard School of Public Health, a PhD in public policy at the University of Texas at Austin, and a post-doc at the Office of Population Research at Princeton. She is now assistant professor at the LBJ School of Public […]