Public Health England’s new framework to include an indicator on Long-Acting Reversible Contraception (LARCs)

Public Health England (PHE) has published their updated “Public Health Outcomes Framework (PHOF)”. In addition to including a new indicator on Long-Acting Reversible Contraception (LARCs), the framework will also maintain its indicators on conceptions in under 18s. These are measures which FSRH have called for and strongly support.

The indicators will be implemented from November this year and will be valid until 2022, until PHE’s next review. Inclusion of the indicators in the framework will result in public bodies reporting on them, drawing the attention of local and national policy actors to the data collected.

The updated framework follows FSRH’s response to PHE’s consultation on the draft publication, where we provided robust evidence in support of both indicators, particularly focused on LARC which in previous frameworks had been neglected.

Building upon PHE’s current success, FSRH would strongly support PHE taking note of the additional recommendations we evidenced the need for:

• The inclusion within the framework of a new indicator for unplanned pregnancy, drawing from the example of the London Measure of Unplanned Pregnancy (LMUP).

• A reduction in the time lag between the initial collection of datasets and their publication in PHOF datasets.

You can view the updated “Public Health Outcomes Framework (PHOF)” here.