IUDs

The Pump Handle is on a holiday break. The following, which was originally published on Feb. 29, is one of our favorite posts from 2016. by Liz Borkowski, MPH I've written before about the Colorado Family Planning Initiative, which in 2009 started providing free IUDs and contraceptive implants (the two forms of long-acting reversible contraception, or LARC) to low-income women at family planning clinics in 37 Colorado counties. Between 2008 and 2014, the state's teen birth and abortion rates both dropped by 48% (see this webinar for details). While teen birth rates have been declining…
Although the US still has a long way to go in preventing unintended pregnancies, an article published earlier this month in the New England Journal of Medicine had some good news:  The proportion of US pregnancies that were unintended dropped from 51% in 2008 to 45% in 2011. Lawrence B. Finer and Mia R. Zolna of the Guttmacher institute analyzed data on pregnancy intention from the National Survey of Family Growth, and note that the rate of unintended pregnancy declined for every income and education group and all racial and ethnic groups. Disparities still persist -- rates are still highest…
I've written before about the Colorado Family Planning Initiative, which in 2009 started providing free IUDs and contraceptive implants (the two forms of long-acting reversible contraception, or LARC) to low-income women at family planning clinics in 37 Colorado counties. Between 2008 and 2014, the state's teen birth and abortion rates both dropped by 48% (see this webinar for details). While teen birth rates have been declining nationwide in recent years, Colorado's decline was the largest. LARC methods have become increasingly popular in the US over the past several years. This is likely…
The Colorado Family Planning Initiative is a public-health success story. With funds from an anonymous foundation, Title X family planning clinics serving low-income women were able to offer IUDs and other highly effective forms of contraception for free. Rates of teen pregnancy and abortion both plummeted. When the foundation funding came to an end as scheduled, though, the state's legislature refused to pick up the tab for this demonstrably successful program. Now, reports Katie Kerwin McCrimmon of Health News Colorado, a group of foundations (11 are listed so far) has pledged funds to…
Last week, the American Academy of Pediatrics published a "Contraceptives for Adolescents" policy statement that advises pediatricians to consider long-acting reversible contraception (LARC) methods as first-line contraceptive choices for adolescents. LARC methods include contraceptive implants that can be inserted into the upper arm (which can remain in place for three years) and intrauterine devices (with different versions approved for three or five years). Unlike condoms or birth-control pills, which require repeated correct use, LARCs only need to be administered once. They have failure…
Mark Pendergrast writes: To kick off this book club discussion of Inside the Outbreaks, I thought I would explain briefly how I came to write the book and then suggest some possible topics for discussion. The origin of the book goes back to an email I got in 2004 from my old high school and college friend, Andy Vernon, who wrote that I should consider writing the history of the EIS. I emailed back to say that I was honored, but what was the EIS? I had never heard of it. I knew Andy worked on tuberculosis at the CDC, but I didn't know that he had been a state-based EIS officer from 1978…