Emergency Contraception (ECP): Reducing Unintended Pregnancies

United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)

Status and phase

Completed

Phase 4

Conditions

Contraception

Pregnancy

Treatments

Drug: emergency contraception (estrogen/progesterone)

Study type

Interventional

Funder types

NIH

Identifiers

NCT00067509

HD38515

Details and patient eligibility

About

Emergency contraception is a method of birth control that can be used up to three days after sexual intercourse. Emergency contraceptive pills (ECPs) can be given to a woman before she needs them (advance provision) or when she needs them (emergency provision). This study will compare these two methods of providing ECPs.

Full description

ECPs can give women a "second chance" to prevent an unintended pregnancy that might arise because of lack or improper/defective use of contraceptives. By using ECP, a woman can reduce her risk of pregnancy by at least 75%; however, there is little information on what distribution patterns and other factors are most likely to encourage ECP use. This study will compare the use and cost of two ECP distribution patterns: advance provision and emergency provision. It will also identify environmental, situational, and behavioral factors associated with ECP acceptance and use.

Participants in this study will be recruited from four family planning clinics in the Philadelphia area and five family planning clinics in the Pittsburgh area. Participants from the Philadelphia clinics will be given ECPs as part of a regular clinic visit (advance provision); participants from the Pittsburgh clinics will be given ECPs on an emergency basis (emergent provision). Each participant will complete a short intake form and will be issued a pager. Participants will be paged every month over an 18-month period as a reminder to respond to a short automated telephone survey on ECP, contraceptives, and pregnancy status. Approximately half of the participants will be randomly selected to participate in in-depth interviews at study entry and Months 9 and 18. Clinic visit data will augment the surveys to verify use of the clinic and contraceptive method and to develop cost data.

Sex

Female

Ages

15 to 39 years old

Volunteers

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

Inclusion Criteria