Randomized Controlled Trial of Structured Contraceptive Counseling in Adult Women

In the United States, highly effective methods of birth control are often not used. Healthcare providers use birth control counseling and patient education as ways to increase the usage of birth control. However, little evidence exists to show that patient education and birth control counseling changes birth control use.

We want to evaluate the effectiveness of using a uniform set of birth control information to provide birth control education to women having an early pregnancy termination. The counselors will allow the clients to both read as well as hear the information. We propose to evaluate whether this counseling will lead to 1) more women choosing highly effective nonpermanent birth control methods and 2) more women continuing to use these methods for a longer time.

Women in the study will complete a questionaire about their health. Half of them will have the structured counseling and half will have the routine counseling currently offered to women as a part of their routine care. We will contact all study participants with a telephone call three months and six months later to have a 10 minute conversation about what birth control they are using.