Background

With the launch of the Victorian women’s sexual and reproductive health plan 2022-2030 and the regionalisation of Public Health units in Victoria, PHNs were called upon by Women’s health Promotion and Local Public Health Units (LPHUs) to share insights and intelligence about the state of care and access to Long Acting Reversible Contraception (LARCs) and Early Medical Abortion (EMA). We recognised large gaps in service provision in our region.

With subsequent changes to the legislation around prescribing and dispensing of medical termination of pregnancy medications by the Therapeutics Drugs Administration (TGA), an exploration of barriers and enablers to service provision appeared timely. Through this series, we’ll be exploring provision of EMA at the systems level, the practice level and the clinical interaction level to better understand how to bring about equitable access in the West Vic region.

Learning outcomes - Early Medical Abortion

• Discuss early medical abortion in regional Victoria from a service access perspective
• Describe the challenges that consumers face in accessing current services
• Locate the issues that providers may face in supporting women to access this service
• Participate in a community of practice to discuss health systems challenges

Population Health Network: Reproductive Health Series 1