LARC

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…