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Providing high-quality, person-centered sexual and reproductive health in primary care is critical for improving outcomes. While pregnancy intention screening and reproductive life planning have been widely adopted to increase access to sexual and reproductive health services, these frameworks are not always meaningful and attainable for patients.
In a qualitative study published in the Journal of Women’s Health Reports, CUNY SPH PhD student Silpa Srinivasulu, Associate Professor Meredith Manze, and Associate Professor Heidi Jones sought to describe women’s interpretations of a reproductive health services-based screening question, moving away from the pregnancy planning paradigm: “Can I help you with any reproductive health services today, such as preventing pregnancy and preparing for a healthy pregnancy?”
The team conducted focus groups and interviews with 30 New York women of reproductive age and found that participants correctly interpreted the question as offering contraception or pregnancy counseling and care, but also sexual and reproductive health services broadly, like fertility and cancer screenings. However, some participants pushed back on primary care as a setting for sexual and reproductive health, due to a perceived lack of specialized training. This demonstrates the need to enhance training for primary care providers in sexual and reproductive health and to increase awareness of SRH services and counseling that can be offered in primary care.
“Implementing a routine, open-ended services-based screening question in primary care, such as our proposed question, may increase patients’ awareness of sexual and reproductive health service availability, enable providers to respond to patients’ sexual and reproductive health needs directly in primary care, and enhance patient-centered care overall,” says Srinivasulu. “Future research should consider testing this screening question in primary care settings to explore its effect on patient-centered SRH outcomes.”
