Table 4

Recommendations for policymakers

Focus area	Recommendation
Access to services	Increase the availability of appointments for contraception, especially long-acting reversible contraception (LARC) procedures, and have systems in place to ensure women are signposted to a nearby service where they can get a LARC appointment if it is not available or there are long waiting times at their current point of access.
	Review booking systems to make them more user-friendly and create more access points to address barriers associated with lengthy waiting times when booking appointments by telephone or attending drop-in centres.
	Clarify post-pandemic processes on how and where to access contraception to alleviate any confusion caused by COVID-19-related policy and practice changes.
	Ensure remote systems and consultations that were introduced during the pandemic remain available for women who favoured the ease and convenience of these modes of access, and strive to make these more user-friendly to encourage more women to switch to accessing contraception this way when appropriate.
Service delivery	Invest in education and training for health practitioners to identify significant time points and life stages when women would benefit from increased contraceptive support and improved interactions at these time points, for instance, when accessing contraception for the first time or during perimenopause.
	Contraceptive services should offer additional support or contraceptive counselling to those who accessed contraception for the first time during the pandemic as restrictions around policy and practice most likely impacted their experience of accessing contraception and they may be unsatisfied with their current contraceptive method.
	Contraceptive services should continue to provide in-person consultations for women who prefer to access contraception this way. Choice is valuable and it is important that women have the option to receive in-person support when they feel they would benefit from this.