Emergency Contraception
Accidents Happen. Pregnancy Doesn't Have To
The purpose of the Emergency Contraception Promotion Project (ECPP) was to increase awareness of and access to emergency contraception pills (ECPs) by young women in the Portland Tri-County area. We implemented a comprehensive social marketing project, incorporating community mobilization, provider training, and a promotional campaign, that contributed to increased awareness and access to EC in the Portland area.
We collaborated with Program for Appropriate Technology in Health ( www.path.org ) to develop provider training to address the lack of knowledge about ECPs and unfavorable attitudes among providers that prevented women from accessing ECPs. Master trainers trained clinical providers and non-clinical providers. Key findings from a pre/post test evaluation revealed significant improvements in provider knowledge, attitudes and promotion of EC information.
The media campaign aimed to increase young women's awareness and knowledge of EC and to encourage them to talk to their health care providers or call the EC Hotline (1-888-NOT-2-LATE, http://ec.princeton.edu ) for more information and referrals. The English and Spanish media consisted of radio ads, posters, and informative wallet cards. The radio ads aired on 6 stations that reached the target audience, while the posters and wallet cards were widely distributed through health care providers, community-based organizations, and outreach events. The radio campaign generated over 1.5 million gross impressions and calls to the EC Hotline tripled during all weeks the radio campaign aired.
Behavioral Impact
Two measures indicating increased access to EC that coincided with ECPP implementation were:
- EC visits to a county health department of Planned Parenthood clinic more than doubled from the pre-intervention period to the intervention period; and
- the number of Plan B orders (the ECP dedicated product) increased nearly twelve times from the pre-intervention period to the intervention period.
