"The thing in my arm": Providing contraceptive services for adolescents in primary care

Due to high rates of unintended pregnancies in Delaware, the state launched a public health initiative in 2014 to increase access to contraceptive services.

This study was designed to assess the practice-level barriers and facilitators to providing contraceptive care, particularly long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs), to adolescents in primary care settings.

This qualitative study was part of a larger process evaluation of the Delaware Contraceptive Access Now (DelCAN) initiative.

In-depth, semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with 16 practice administrators at 13 adolescent-serving primary care sites across the state of Delaware. A process of open, axial, and selective coding was used to analyze the data.

Despite the interest in LARC among their adolescent patients, administrators described numerous barriers to providing LARC for adolescents including confidentiality in patient visits and billing, preceptorship, and provider discomfort and assumptions about the need for contraception among adolescent patients.

Findings from this study reveal substantial barriers to providing contraception to adolescents, even in primary care practices that were committed to comprehensive contraceptive access for their adolescent patients. This study supports the need for contraceptive care to be integrated into training of pediatricians at every stage of their education. Such training must go beyond education about contraceptive options and the clinical skills necessary for LARC insertion and removal, to include counseling skills based in a reproductive justice framework. Additional changes in policies and practices for adolescent patients would further increase access to contraceptive care.