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Increasing access to emergency contraception through online prescription requests
Sarah Averbach1, Jacqueline Moro Wendt, Deborah K Levine
1School of Medicine, University of California San Francisco, 500 Parnassus Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA. sarah.averbach@ucsf.edu
Objective:
To describe a pilot program, Plan B Online Prescription Access, to provide easy access to prescriptions for emergency contraception via the Internet.
Study Design:
We measured electronic prescriptions for Plan B (Duramed Pharmaceuticals, Cincinnati, Ohio) by month over time. Pharmacists faxed patient-generated prescriptions back to the Department of Public Health for confirmation.
Results:
Despite no marketing, within the first 18 months of the program, 152 electronic prescriptions for Plan B were requested by 128 female San Francisco residents. Seventy-eight prescriptions were filled (51%) by pharmacists.
Conclusion:
If correctly marketed, online prescriptions for Plan B have the potential to be an effective means of increasing emergency contraception access in both urban and rural settings across the United States. Further user-acceptability studies are warranted.
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