PROJECT
Oral Contraceptive Use on the US–Mexico Border

The setting for this study—the United States–Mexico border separating El Paso and Ciudad Juarez—will allow Population Council researchers and collaborators at Ibis Reproductive Health, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Texas at El Paso to examine a number of factors that affect women’s use of oral contraceptives (OCs). In Texas, women can obtain oral contraceptives only with a prescription, whereas in Mexico, OCs are available over the counter. Residents of El Paso frequently cross the border to purchase their OCs from Mexican pharmacies.

One of the project’s aims is to assess whether women are as capable as health professionals of screening for contraindications to OC use. To this end, researchers will recruit women in El Paso shopping malls to complete a simple checklist of contraindications to self-assess whether they are appropriate candidates for OCs. Researchers will then compare these self-assessments to clinical assessments of the women completed by an onsite nurse.

Researchers also will compare women who purchase OCs over the counter at pharmacies in Ciudad Juarez to women who procure OCs with a prescription from family planning clinics in El Paso. Making this comparison will enable researchers to explore the women’s motivations for buying OCs at each location and understand the relationship between procurement location and women’s knowledge of OCs.

A third objective of the project is to investigate how well a simply written instruction leaflet about OCs conveys information to women obtaining oral contraceptive pills in Mexican pharmacies.

Finally, Council researchers will follow a prospective cohort of OC users recruited from Ciudad Juarez pharmacies and El Paso family planning clinics for nine months to assess whether the women’s initial decisions regarding OC procurement source are associated with method satisfaction, compliance, and continuation, and unintended pregnancy.

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Location

El Paso, Texas; Ciudad Juarez, Mexico

Duration

January 2006–December 2010

Population Council researchers

Sandra Garcia, Eileen Yam

Non-Council collaborators

Jon Amastae (Center for Inter-American and Border Studies, University of Texas at El Paso)

Leticia Fernandez (Center for Inter-American and Border Studies, University of Texas at El Paso)

Daniel Grossman (Ibis Reproductive Health)

Kristine Hopkins, Joseph Potter (University of Texas at Austin)

Donors

US National Institutes of Health

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See Also

• Mexico

• Contraception

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