Experiences of Black and ethnic minority women

Wellbeing of Women Scholarship

Providing women with choices about contraception improves their health and the health of their children. We know that women from ethnic minorities find it more challenging to access contraceptive services in the UK, but we do not know why this is. There is little research looking into what women from ethnic minorities think of different contraceptive options and their experience of side effects. We want to study this to provide a better, more equal contraceptive service.

Our current study has explored experiences and access to contraception for women from ethnic minority groups. One of the key findings has been about side effects and women’s belief that those from ethnic minority groups experience different side effects that may be related to genetic predispositions.

We will summarise all the previous research looking at the experience of contraceptive side effects for women from ethnic minorities. We will ask women to volunteer to take part in our study. We will organise two discussion groups, each with women from different ethnic minority groups, to talk confidentially about contraception side effects.

In the initial focus groups, we will ask them about their experiences of contraceptive side effects and what information they were given about side effects. We will also discuss what information is essential to them and how they would like information presented.  We will ask women from ethnic minority community organisations, such as social groups or charities with whom we already have links from our current project.

The final stage will be to bring the women back together to design patient information leaflets about contraception side effects based on the focus group discussions.