BEYOND BARRIERS: REIMAGINING ACCESS TO POST-PREGNANCY CONTRACEPTION THE CASE FOR CHANGE
Why is Post-Pregnancy Contraception Important? The Clear Case for Action:
It’s what women want:
The case for improved PPC is clear to providers who see how with a new baby, accessing contraception can be understandably even more difficult to access or prioritise. “PPC is an essential aspect to empower women who are often under significant pressures to support a newborn and or other children.” York and North Yorkshire PPC service “PPC is important to us, because contraception is important to us, and the health of women and their families now and moving forwards is important to us. I find it frustrating that we are able to do many, many complex things for women and their babies without even thinking about it, but we are unable to easily provide one of the most basic forms of healthcare, one that has very valuable benefits to women and their families.” South Tees PPC service PPC Can Help Tackle Health Inequalities: The Government has made clear that reducing health inequalities is at the heart of its vision for the future of the NHS. Several contributors to this report outlined how PPC has successfully reduced health inequalities in their local area by facilitating access to essential services and engaging with typically ‘easy to ignore’ groups. By flexibly providing contraception to women post-pregnancy in circumstances that suited them, they are improving women’s outcomes, particularly those who may find it harder to access SRH services:
“ I had to ask about contraception myself, and then I was told I could have it at the same time as my caesarean. ” “ I wanted to talk about the coil and implant [before birth] .” “ Obviously, [...] we had, we had to speak about these kind of things. Because, obviously, I dinnae want to be falling pregnant, straight after, [...] And, yeah, it kind of helped me a lot [...] I didn’t know that, like, I could get it [the implant] put in straightaway after [...] I thought I had to wait, like, a couple of weeks .” Guidelines recommend that individuals wait 12-24 months after giving birth before trying to get pregnant again to optimise maternal recovery, reproductive autonomy and improve health outcomes for future pregnancies. 34 The CoSRH and The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidance state that service providers should ensure all women have access to the full range of effective contraceptive methods immediately after childbirth and all other pregnancy outcomes such as miscarriage, stillbirth, neonatal death, molar or ectopic pregnancy, or abortion. 35 Additionally, Sands, the UK’s leading pregnancy and baby loss charity, guidance advises healthcare professionals to approach these conversations with compassion, empathy and sensitivity, recognising emotional context and individual needs, as outlined in the National Bereavement Care Pathway (NBCP). However, access to contraception is highly variable to women across the UK. While all women and service users should be able to access contraception from primary care and sexual health services, in reality, women can face huge barriers in doing so, as shown in a recent report from the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) which surveyed over 1,000 women aged 18-45 and found that nearly half of women face barriers to accessing contraception. 36 Consensus from contributors to this report is that these barriers are often intensified, worsened or exacerbated with a newborn baby.
34 World Health Organization. Birth spacing: A policy brief, 2005; College of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare. Contraception after pregnancy: Guideline, January 2017; National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. Quality statement 4: Contraception after childbirth, 2016. 35 College of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare. Contraception after pregnancy: Guideline, January 2017; National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. Quality statement 4: Contraception after childbirth, 2016; UK Parliament. CDP-2025-0038: Women’s Health.
36 British Pregnancy Advisory Service, Contraception Re-Imagined: The Unfinished Revolution, March 2025.
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