Driving better sexual and reproductive health outcomes for women through primary care

We innovate strategies to ensure the Australian primary care workforce adequately addresses women's sexual and reproductive health needs, including trialling alternative service delivery methods to enhance accessibility, particularly in rural and regional areas.

Understanding the needs and preferences of women is important when co-designing interventions that can help women achieve their individual reproductive goals.

Health data sets are useful in gaining insights into the state of women's sexual and reproductive health in Australia and identifying gaps in health care provision.

Some Australian mothers regard navigating their personal health care in between pregnancies as confusing, inconsistent, and hard to access, new research by a Monash University-led team has found. The focus of consultations between pregnancies is mostly on babies and children, while the health needs of mothers can be neglected.

It’s normally a taboo topic, but when a minor party threatened to push to change abortion laws in Queensland, the upcoming state election was turned on its head, with experts warning the discussion was entering “dangerous” territory. Queenslanders will be voting on Saturday to elect their next government for the next four years.

Professor Jane Fisher from the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine has been elected as a new Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences (AAHMS) for 2024, the nation’s learned academy for the most influential experts in health and medicine.

Only 22% of women prescribed teratogenic medications are concurrently on hormonal contraception, doctors and pharmacologists warn, based on their study of PBS records for 16,000 women. More than 90% of the women in the study were taking oral retinoids, dermatologists needed to be responsible for ensuring women of child-bearing age had overlapping contraception.

As Queensland’s state election approaches, the prospect of abortion rights being reduced has come into the spotlight. Conservative MP Robbie Katter from the Katter Australia Party has confirmed he will re-introduce legislation in the next term of parliament that seeks to increase restrictions on abortion access.

In 2018, Queensland was one of the last states to decriminalise abortion. In 2025, it could be the first state to recriminalise it. The Liberal National Party is tipped for a definitive win in the 26 October election. Conservative minor party MP Robbie Katter initially hinted that he would introduce legislation to repealing the 2018 laws when the new government forms.