By Amanda Gardner
MONDAY, March 26, 2012 (Health.com) ? Since 2009 the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has mandated that Plan B and other emergency contraceptives be available without a prescription to women age 17 and up. In reality, a new study suggests, a 17-year-old?s access to these drugs can be uncertain.
In the study, two female research assistants at Boston University called every commercial pharmacy in five major cities and asked whether emergency contraception was available to them that day. If the answer was yes, they followed up with the question ?If I?m 17, is that okay??
At that point, 19% of the pharmacy workers told the young women that contraception would not be available to them. When researchers posing as doctors called the same pharmacies on behalf of a (fictional) 17-year-old patient, however, just 3% of pharmacies said the drugs weren?t available.
Pharmacies, moreover, incorrectly reported the age guidelines for over-the-counter access to 43% of the ?girls? and 39% of the ?doctors,? according to the study, which appears in the April issue of the journal Pediatrics.
Misinformation of this sort could lead to unintended pregnancies, the researchers say. ?It?s important that adolescents get the correct information the first time,? says Tracey Wilkinson, M.D., the lead author of the study and a professor of pediatrics at Boston University. ?This highlights some of the barriers that adolescents face when accessing emergency contraception.?
Two emergency contraceptives, both of which contain the hormone levonorgestrel, are approved for over-the-counter use and are stocked behind pharmacy counters: Plan B (including the single-pill version known as Plan B One-Step), and a so-called branded generic known as Next Choice.
Timely access to these drugs is important, Wilkinson and her colleagues say, since they?re most effective in the 24 hours following unprotected sex or a contraception failure. The odds of getting pregnant rise by about 50% every 12 hours after the event, according to the study.
The study included every pharmacy?nearly 950 in all?in Austin, Texas; Cleveland; Nashville, Tenn.; Philadelphia; and Portland, Ore. Researchers contacted each pharmacy twice, once in the role of the teenager and once in the role of the doctor. To better disguise their identity, they spaced the calls at least two weeks apart and used cell phones programmed with each city?s area code.
In roughly 20% of the phone calls, pharmacy workers reported that emergency contraception was not available for any caller or patient, regardless of age. Some of those pharmacies?about one-third?suggested another nearby pharmacy or offered to order the pills, but the average wait time was 45 hours.
Next page: Were ?personal beliefs? to blame?
Source: http://news.health.com/2012/03/26/teen-access-plan-b/
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