Abstract
Across Asia and the Pacific, girls and young women continue to experience high unmet needs for sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services, and subsequently face a range of poor health and social outcomes—including unintended pregnancy.
We need to transform current approaches to address and prevent early and unintended pregnancy to more effectively respond to the lived realities of girls and women in the region and overcome the substantial barriers they face seeking SRH care.
A potential opportunity lies in youth-led SRH self-care and contraceptive innovation.
If situated in and evolving from the realities of adolescents’ lives, self-care and contraceptive innovation could: help overcome social, cultural and gender norms around SRH that prevent unmarried girls and young women from accessing services; respond to the heightened need for privacy and confidentiality that becomes so prominent during adolescence; and support young people’s agency and self-determination through access to modern contraception that aligns more closely to their sexual and social lives.
A programme of thoughtful youth-led research across Asia and the Pacific—that centres girls’ and young women’s views and lived experiences of self-care for pregnancy prevention—would help inform new solutions to early and unintended pregnancy, including innovation in contraceptive technology, service delivery and self-care.
Contraceptive and self-care innovations need to be supported by expanding the enabling environment for young people’s SRH, including attention to the social, legal and regulatory barriers that prevent all young people from being able to access quality, non-judgemental and confidential care.