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Tailored contraceptive advice key for CALD patients: Study
Offering highly targeted and easy-to-understand education is crucial to empowering women to make informed decisions, one GP researcher found.
An act as simple as watching a 13-minute video is having life-changing impacts for Australia’s culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) community, as GP researchers investigate how best to deliver contraceptive advice.
A new study from the SPHERE Centre of Research Excellence at Monash University found advice delivered in a person’s own language is key to increasing birth control knowledge of women from multicultural backgrounds.
The research, published in BMJ Sexual & Reproductive Health, said patients from CALD backgrounds often experience greater barriers in accessing sexual and reproductive health information and care, due, in part, to lower health literacy, limited awareness of health services, and cost.
In a bid to improve this, GP researchers wrote five 13-minute videos, each created by members of the community and in a different language – Arabian, Cantonese, English, Hindi, and Mandarin.
The videos explain contraception options in Australia and how to access it, including discussing long-acting reversible contraception (LARC), such as intrauterine devices (IUDs) and the contraceptive implant.
One hundred and sixty women were involved in the study.
The authors said these videos were effective in improving contraceptive knowledge by 41% for women aged 16–25 from CALD backgrounds.
Before watching the short video, the study found just 14% of participants rated their knowledge about every contraceptive method as high.
Lead researcher and Head of Monash University’s Department of General Practice, Professor Danielle Mazza, said the study was designed to give all women autonomy in reproductive decision making.
‘Designed to increase knowledge of LARC, the research addressed many of the questions and concerns young women of various ethnic backgrounds have about these products,’ she said.
‘Use of LARCs by Australian women from multicultural communities is low due to limited knowledge, stigma and misconceptions.
‘Combining contraceptive education with support to LARC access is crucial for empowering these young women to make informed contraceptive decisions and prevent unintended pregnancies.’
Currently, 40% of all pregnancies in Australia are unintended, with women living in rural and regional settings 1.4 times more likely to experience this.
The videos, available online now for GPs to access and refer patients to, specifically include information on the presence and types of hormones found in various contraceptive methods.
They explain contraception effectiveness, how the contraceptive is used, inserted and removed, length of use, cost, whether a prescription is needed, effects on bleeding patterns.
The videos also cover non-contraceptive benefits, whether the contraceptive provides protection against sexually transmissible infections, and common side effects.
‘The significant increase in knowledge, likelihood of use, and preference for LARC underscores the potential of online video-based contraceptive education to address contraceptive knowledge gaps and challenge misconceptions about LARC held by young women,’ the study concluded.
‘Combining contraceptive education with supports to LARC access is crucial for empowering young CALD women to make informed contraceptive decisions.’
The study’s results come amid the release of the National Women’s Health Strategy 2020–30 which outlines a goal to increase the availability and uptake of LARCs, particularly in multicultural populations.
The videos are now available on the SPHERE website.
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CALD culturally and linguistically diverse LARC long-acting reversible contraception women’s health
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