ARHP is sponsoring a new continuing medical education (CME) visiting faculty program, Risk Made Real: An Evidence-Based Approach to Addressing Risk in Contraception. The goal of this program is to provide health care providers and their patients with the knowledge and practical tools they need to appropriately contextualize and understand the risks and benefits of all forms of contraception.

For more information about the program, please contact Aleya Horn Kennedy at ahornkennedy@arhp.org or (202) 466-3825.

Background

Nearly half of US pregnancies each year are unintended, primarily because individuals fail to correctly and consistently use effective contraceptive methods.¹ Healthcare providers are reluctant to discuss the range of birth control options currently available with all of their patients due to time restraints, gaps in education, or clinical misperceptions. On the other hand, patients are hesitant to explore all appropriate hormonal and non-hormonal methods due to lack of knowledge and fears about risk perpetuated by culture and the media.² Significant gaps in provider training on contraceptive methods combine with cognitive biases and incorrect assumptions to negatively impact patient care.³ For example, intrauterine contraception (IUC) is one of the most effective reversible methods available, providing safe, “forgettable” contraception for 5–10 years .^4,5 Yet, IUC is among the most underutilized methods of contraception, mainly due to a lack of provider confidence and competence with insertion and ongoing myths about appropriate candidates for IUC.^4,5 As health care options expand with recent decisions by the Institute of Medicine about recommended women’s preventative services, the reproductive landscape is becoming even more complex while new and established technologies remain under media, regulatory, and political scrutiny. These factors contribute to the difficult challenge of provider-patient communication.

ARHP has worked for decades to ensure that health care providers and consumers have accurate information about and access to all safe, effective contraceptive options in an effort to reduce continued high rates of unintended pregnancy, and the barriers that surround these methods. ARHP will implement a multifaceted educational program to help providers and their patients do a better job of interpreting the scientific literature and understanding contraceptive risk.

Program Design and Educational Activities

• Six live sessions and four live webinars:
  • ARHP will place six CME presentations at a variety of venues throughout 2012. Session venues will include national and regional society meetings, family planning clinics, and other public health settings. Select sessions will include team-based interactive presentations, designed to build provider confidence and competence addressing all contraceptive methods, specifically counseling patients, screening patients, and building the skills need to have an appropriate yet informative dialogue with patients that target any fears or misconceptions surrounding contraception. ARHP will also offer the four didactic lectures with discussion via a webinar at www.arhp.org/webcme.
• Clinic Minute:
  • To complement the live sessions, expert advisors and program staff will identify key segments from the curriculum that would be appropriate as stand-alone mini modules. These sections will be adapted into text-based mini modules containing no more than 1,500 words, followed by a brief quiz that participants can complete for credit. Mini-modules will be available on the ARHP portal and accessible to providers nationwide.
• Risk Made Real Infopak:
  • Greatest Myths Fact Sheet:a Fact Sheet featuring the five greatest myths about contraception methods held by both providers and patients that impede their usage. 

Curriculum Learning Objectives

At the conclusion of the medical education sessions, participants will be able to:

• Assess factors that influence patients’ perceptions of risk
• Define absolute risk, attributable risk, relative risk, and odds ratio
• Explain the differences, advantages, and disadvantages of descriptive studies, observational studies, and prospective studies
• Demonstrate effective risk communication strategies

Intended Audience and Accreditation

The intended audience for this program includes nurse practitioners, nurse-midwives, physicians, physician assistants, pharmacists, and other health care providers in obstetrics/gynecology, and family and internal medicine.

ARHP is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to sponsor continuing medical education (CME) for physicians. ARHP also partners with other accrediting organizations to provide nursing contact hours and other forms of credentialing to reproductive health professionals who participate in our educational activities. ARHP has applied to be an accredited provider of pharmacist credit through the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE).All ARHP programs are peer-reviewed by experts in the field of reproductive health.

Funding

This project is funded through an educational grant from Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals, Merck and Co., and Teva Pharmaceuticals. 

• Finer LB, Henshaw SK. Disparities in rates of unintended pregnancy in the United States, 1994 and 2001. Perspect Sex Reprod Health. 2006 Jun;38(2):90-6.
• Schwartz LM, Woloshin S, Black WC, and Welch HG. The role of numeracy in understanding the benefit of screening mammography. Ann Intern Med. 1997;127:(11):966–72.
• Woloshin S, Schwartz LM, Moncur M, Gabriel S, and Tosteson AN. Assessing values for health: numeracy matters. Med Decis Making. 2001;(5):382–90.
• Trussell J. Contraceptive efficacy. In: Hatcher RA, Trussell J, Nelson AL, et al. (Eds.) Contraceptive Technology, 19th Ed. New York, NY: Ardent Media, Inc.; 2007.
• Roan S. Unintended pregnancies a sign of the times. The Los Angeles Times. 2009 May 7. Retrieved from http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/booster_shots/2009/05/unintended-pregnancies-a-sign-of-the-times.html