Family Planning

Should oral contraceptives be available without prescription?

James Trussell
Felicia Stewart
Malcolm Potts
Felicia Guest
Charlotte Ellertson
1993

In this paper, it is argued that oral contraceptives should be available without prescription. Prescription status entails heavy costs, including the dollar, time, and psychological costs of visiting a physician to obtain a prescription, the financial and human costs of unintended pregnancies that result from the obstacle to access caused by medicalization of oral contraceptives, and administrative costs to the health care system. After a review and evaluation of the reasons for strict medical control of oral contraceptives in the United States, safety concerns anticipated in response to...

The impact of maternal health improvement on perinatal survival: cost-effective alternatives

Julia Walsh
A Measham
C Feifer C
Paul Gertler
1994

Each year, an estimated half million women die from complications related to child birth either during pregnancy, delivery or within 42 days afterwards. When pregnant women have complications, their infants are at greater risk of becoming ill, permanently disabled or dying. For every maternal death, there are at least 20 infant deaths: stillbirths, neonatal or postneonatal deaths. Altogether, an estimated 7 million infants each year die perinatally (stillborn or deaths within the first week of life). Low cost, feasible, and effective intervention strategies include: a) improved family...

Safety implications of transferring the oral contraceptive from prescription-only to over-the-counter status

Malcolm Potts
Colleen Denny
1995

The idea of making oral contraceptives available without prescription has a long history, and has been recently revived in the US and the UK. High dose oral contraceptives have generally been replaced by low dose formulations and, subsequently, most cardiovascular risks have been reduced and a protection against ovarian and uterine cancers has been consistently demonstrated. Oral contraceptive compliance, however, continues to be a problem, but there is no reason to assume that wise practice would be any more or less if oral contraceptives were available over-the-counter (OTC). Some...

The myth of a male pill

Malcolm Potts
1996

This article discusses progress and limitations in developing a male birth control pill

Published in Nature Medicine 2, 398 – 399 (1996)

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The fertility transition in Cuba and the Federal Republic of Korea: the impact of organised family planning

Jeanne Noble
Malcolm Potts
1996

South Korea and Cuba are dissimilar in religion, economy, culture and attitudes toward premarital sexual relations. In 1960, Korea instituted a national family planning programme to combat rapid population growth. Cuba explicitly rejected Malthusian policies, but made family planning universally available in 1974 in response to health needs. Both countries have undergone rapid fertility declines and today have less than replacement level fertility. Both countries have also used a similar mixture of methods, including a high prevalence of female sterilisation. Abortion has played a major...

Making Cairo work

Malcolm Potts
Julia Walsh
1999

The 1994 International Conference on Population and Development set broad new goals for family planning and reproductive health. The resources available to fund these much needed programmes, however, are much smaller than was originally calculated. To divide the limited budgets for the maximum health impact, likely resource flows need to be set against the cost of various family planning and reproductive health interventions. Preliminary analysis suggests that selection of cost-effective delivery of family planning services would still meet much of the need for family planning, and that...

War, peace, and fertility in Angola

Victor Agadjanian
2002

Using data from a nationally representative survey conducted in 1996, some two years after the end of a major outbreak of war, we examine the impact of war on the timing of recent births and war-related differences in reproductive preferences in Angola. We find evidence of a wartime drop and a postwar rebound in fertility, but these trends vary greatly, depending on the type and degree of exposure to war and on women’s socioeconomic characteristics. At the same time, variations by parity are nonsignificant. In fertility preferences, the relative antinatalism of Angola’s most modernized...

War, peace, and fertility in Angola

Victor Agadjanian
Ndola Prata
2002

Using data from a nationally representative survey conducted in 1996, some two years after the end of a major outbreak of war, we examine the impact of war on the timing of recent births and war-related differences in reproductive preferences in Angola. We find evidence of a wartime drop and a postwar rebound in fertility, but these trends vary greatly, depending on the type and degree of exposure to war and on women’s socioeconomic characteristics. At the same time, variations by parity are nonsignificant. In fertility preferences, the relative antinatalism of Angola’s most modernized...

Important step for global security

Martha Campbell
Malcolm Potts
2003

This letter to the lancet discusses the need to meet the increasing demand for access to modern family planning and family as a strategy for global security

Published in Lancet, 7 5 2003, 362(9377):76

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Making family planning accessible in resource-poor settings

Ndola Prata
2019
Abstract

It is imperative to make family planning more accessible in low resource settings. The poorest couples have the highest fertility, the lowest contraceptive use and the highest unmet need for contraception. It is also in the low resource settings where maternal and child mortality is the highest. Family planning can contribute to improvements in maternal and child health, especially in low resource settings where overall access to health services is limited. Four critical steps should be taken to increase access to family planning in resource-poor settings: (i) increase knowledge...