'Country women are resilient but. …': Family planning access in rural Victoria.

OBJECTIVE This study examined barriers to accessing three types of family planning service (emergency contraception, termination of pregnancy and options counselling) within the Grampians region of Victoria. In addressing the challenges faced by geographically marginalised women, the intention was to contribute to feminist psychological research in the field of women's health. DESIGN The qualitative study drew on community and health psychology frameworks. Community psychology's ecological perspective takes into account the different contexts of people's lives, while the focus on psychosocial aspects of women's reproductive health behaviour places the study in a health psychology domain. SETTING Grampians region of Victoria, Australia. PARTICIPANTS Eleven professionals whose employment was connected to family planning services in Victoria. INTERVENTIONS Semi-structured interviews. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES The study documented professionals' perceptions of facilitators and barriers to accessing family planning services in rural areas and the implications for women's psychosocial health and their ability to make timely decisions about a pregnancy. RESULTS A thematic analysis confirmed that women in the Grampians region face many barriers including lack of local services, privacy, misinformation and judgmental service providers. While these issues could arise anywhere, the problem is compounded in rural areas by limited options and rural cultural pressures. CONCLUSIONS This study highlights the complexity of many rural women's reproductive 'choices', and recommends plausible strategies to tackle barriers and facilitate access to family planning services. Reproductive health research can benefit from community and health psychology perspectives that consider psychosocial and cultural contexts as well as biomedical factors.