Contraception and abortion information and care in community pharmacy for adolescents: a systematic review.
systematic_review · Level I
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 40791892.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1016/j.eclinm.2025.103394 and PMC identifier 12336644.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Adolescents encounter greater barriers when accessing sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services than adults. Community-based pharmacists are uniquely positioned to address this due to their accessibility and availability within urban and rural contexts. This systematic review aimed to examine adolescents' experience and acceptability of contraception and abortion clinical and dispensing services in community pharmacy. Seven databases were systematically searched to identify original peer-reviewed studies from high-income countries, from 2000 to 2025, relating to adolescents, pharmacy, contraception and medication abortion. The search was conducted in June 2023 and updated in April 2025. This review is registered with Prospero (CRD42022298209). Thirty-four studies were included; the majority focused on the emergency contraceptive pill. Despite adolescents feeling that the pharmacy was an accessible and convenient source of SRH services and that pharmacists provided them with comprehensive information, adolescents experienced and feared embarrassment, judgement and stigma. Though this review identified community pharmacies as safe, accessible settings where adolescents can conveniently seek care, competency in adolescent-friendly care needs to be optimised, with greater focus on expanding pharmacists' scope-of-practice. No funding was received for this study.