Implementing women's sexual and reproductive health interventions in prisons: a realist review

To explore what works for whom, how and why when implementing women's sexual and reproductive health interventions in prisons to understand the barriers and facilitators to implementation and to generate recommendations for policymakers.

Realist review using the Realist And Meta-narrative Evidence Synthesis: Evolving Standards guidelines.

We systematically searched Ovid MEDLINE, Global Health, Embase, the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) and the American Psychological Association (APA) PsycINFO databases and hand-searched unpublished literature and reference lists, January-June 2025.

Primary studies of implementing women's sexual and/or reproductive health interventions, including those addressing sexually transmitted infections, cervical health, breast screening, contraception and women's health holistically. Study populations included people in prisons that detain women in high-income countries.

We extracted and analysed data relating to implementation processes using a grounded theory approach and retroductive inference to articulate cross-case Intervention-Context-Actor-Mechanism-Outcome configurations (ICAMOCs) and refine programme theory. We discussed findings in relation to existing theories from the literature to elicit recommendations for policymakers.

Of 4617 deduplicated records, 26 met the inclusion criteria. Ten ICAMOCs were constructed from cross-case analyses, grouped into three themes: (1) planning (teaming, team leadership, assessing needs and capacity, tailoring and planning), (2) doing (piloting, standardisation and support, trauma-informed engagement and peer advocacy) and (3) sustaining (evaluation-adaptation cycles). The ICAMOCs indicated three overarching mechanisms as being key to effective implementation, namely, perceived utility of the intervention, motivation and empowerment.

For women's sexual and reproductive health interventions to be effective in prisons, everyone involved in implementation needs to perceive the intervention's benefit and be both motivated and empowered to take action. We recommend policymakers build a resilient and empowered delivery workforce, invest in research partnerships to increase awareness and understanding and promote trauma-informed approaches to women's healthcare in prisons.