INFO Publication Announcement

April 20, 2006

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Population Reports:
New Attention to the IUD: Expanding Women's
Contraceptive Options To Meet Their Needs

Modern intrauterine devices (IUDs) are safe, effective, and quickly reversible long-term contraceptives that require little attention after insertion. Yet safety concerns and programmatic challenges have held back IUD services in many countries. New guidance from the World Health Organization should help reassure providers that most women can use IUDs safely, according to the latest Population Reports issue from the INFO Project at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for Communication Programs.

New Attention to the IUD: Expanding Women's Contraceptive Options To Meet Their Needs (Series B, Number 7) provides program managers with ways to:

• Overcome perceived programmatic challenges to providing IUD services, including approaches to keep down costs.
• Help assure good-quality care for IUD services (a checklist is included).
• Answer questions from providers and policy makers about IUD safety, medical eligibility criteria, and programming needs.
• Be alert for common provider biases—and practices that come out of those biases—that unnecessarily limit IUD use.

Family planning providers can use the report to:

• Apply evidence-based guidance so that women are not unnecessarily excluded from IUD use. (A checklist developed by Family Health International that can help providers screen potential IUD clients is included.)
• Learn how to minimize the risk of infection.
• Explain more clearly the effectiveness of IUDs and other methods, using an illustration to show the chances of pregnancy visually rather than through numbers.
• Counsel potential IUD clients effectively to help them make good family planning choices and increase successful use of their chosen method.

Ruwaida M. Salem, MPH, prepared the report. Catherine Richey provided research assistance.

To order the latest issue and other INFO publications go to http://www.jhuccp.org/orders/orderform.php.

The full-text (PDF version) of this issue also is available online at: http://www.infoforhealth.org/pr/b7/published/b7eng.pdf.

(An HTML version is forthcoming at http://www.populationreports.org/b7/.)

A PowerPoint presentation of the information in the report that can be adapted and used for training, classroom lectures, and other presentations is available for download at http://www.infoforhealth.org/pr/online.shtml. For a listing of all Population Reports issues online go to http://www.populationreports.org.

Population Reports is published three times a year by the INFO Project in English, French, and Spanish at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health/Center for Communication Programs.

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