Driving better sexual and reproductive health outcomes for women through primary care

We innovate strategies to ensure the Australian primary care workforce adequately addresses women's sexual and reproductive health needs, including trialling alternative service delivery methods to enhance accessibility, particularly in rural and regional areas.

Understanding the needs and preferences of women is important when co-designing interventions that can help women achieve their individual reproductive goals.

Health data sets are useful in gaining insights into the state of women's sexual and reproductive health in Australia and identifying gaps in health care provision.

The hormonal contraceptive pill was a watershed moment for female liberation, but a corner of TikTok seems to have forgotten this. Unqualified creators have taken to the internet to demonise birth control and instead promote cycle tracking or fertility awareness-based methods (FAMs) as superior options. Your reproductive choices are your own, but when two-thirds of Australian teenagers get their health advice from social media, platforming this content can be dangerous.

The proportion of women presenting to Australian general practice with endometriosis almost doubled between 2011-2021, according to a new study. From Monash University’s SPHERE Centre of Research Excellence, the research analysed deidentified electronic medical data from almost 20,000 women with endometriosis, aged 14 to 49 years, who sought care from 660 general practitioners across 2,700 clinics.

Women in Alice Springs say long wait times to access IUD birth control are forcing them to consider travelling interstate for insertion and removal. IUDs can be inserted by GPs, gynaecologists and family planning doctors, but in Alice Springs there aren't enough local professionals.

Why should women in British Columbia, Manitoba, Prince Edward Island and the Yukon have access to free contraception while the rest of Canadians do not? Our new research, published in the British Medical Journal and JAMA Pediatrics, underscores the urgent need for universal prescription contraception coverage nationwide. 

General practice nurses are well-positioned to increase women’s access to the most effective form of contraception and abortion care if more support and training is provided, according to new research from Monash University’s SPHERE Centre of Research Excellence. A study, published in the Journal of Advanced Nursing, revealed practice nurses are underutilised when it comes to advice, and treatment, for patients about long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs).

A recent study conducted by the SPHERE Centre for Research Excellence at Monash University explores how community pharmacies could play a greater role in providing contraception information and services to adolescents. Published in eClinicalMedicine, the study, reveals that both adolescents and community pharmacists are interested in the enhanced access to sexual and reproductive health services that community pharmacy offers, although barriers remain.