Wednesday 20 August 2008

Percentage Of U.S. Women Receiving Contraceptive Services Increases, Study Finds

�The portion of U.S. women world Health Organization reported receiving contraceptive services increased from 36% in 1995 to 41% in 2002, and about one-quarter of women who obtained services utilised publicly funded clinics, according to a study conducted by the Guttmacher Institute and promulgated in the October issue of the American Journal of Public Health, HealthDay News/Washington Post reports.

For the study, Jennifer Frost, a senior enquiry associate at Guttmacher, examined National Survey of Family Growth information from 1995 and 2002 to find patterns and trends in the employment of sexual and generative health upkeep. For the survey, women ages 15 to 44 indicated on in-home questionnaires whether they had received 13 specific services in the former 12 months.

Frost found that although the percentage of women receiving contraceptive services had increased, the part receiving all sexual and reproductive services, including Pap tests and sexually transmitted infection testing, remained constant at 74%. According to the study, women world Health Organization went to publicly funded clinics received a broader range of services overall than women who went to private clinics (Doheny, HealthDay News/Washington Post, 8/13). About 33% of women who reported having an HIV or STI test and 17% of women who reported a Pap test or pelvic test did so at a public clinic, according to the report.

"In addition to providing clear benefits for women and their families by helping women avoid pregnancies they do not want and project the pregnancies they do, studies indicate that family planning clinic services spare $4.3 billion in public pecuniary resource each twelvemonth," Frost aforementioned. A previous Guttmacher study found that publicly funded family planning clinics keep 1.4 million unintended pregnancies p.a., and researchers estimated around 600,000 of those pregnancies would end in abortion (Guttmacher release, 8/13).

Frost said it is possible that fewer women ar undergoing sterilization and are instead seeking birth control pills or other contraception, so they need to return to the doctor for birth control pills and other contraceptive options. She added that although the study's findings are encouraging, at that place is still "room for improvement." Frost said that many women are "non getting all the services they want," including counsel on contraceptive options. However, Frost added that public clinics ar "filling a big need for low-income women and providing a really authoritative service."

Vanessa Cullins, frailty president for medical affairs at the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, aforesaid that the findings "highlighting changes" in reproductive tending that "hopefully will become trends," adding that the study "suggests that private providers are beginning to focus on the prophylactic device needs of women" (HealthDay News/Washington Post, 8/13).


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