London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

Researchers at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine have been working with Brook and FPA, the UK's two leading sexual health charities, to develop a world first for sexual health, My Contraception Tool.

My Contraception Tool is a new and unique online tool to help people choose their next contraceptive method. It's hoped that My Contraception Tool will become an invaluable website accessory for women and men of any reproductive age wanting information about contraception.

People can log on to My Contraception Tool at: www.brook.org.uk/mycontraceptiontool or www.fpa.org.uk/mycontraceptiontool. My Contraception Tool asks the online user a series of questions about contraception in terms of their health, lifestyle, circumstances and preferences. Using the latest data, software1 and research2 it calculates their answers and displays the best methods to use ranked in order. It's supported with a wealth of information on other aspects of sexual health and details of where to go for further help and advice.

My Contraception Tool is highly interactive, so the user can change their preferences at the results stage to see how their answers affect the options given. They can also print out the results to take to a contraceptive consultation to discuss with their health professional who will prescribe a method in the
usual way.

Almost eighteen months in development, My Contraception Tool was created by a team of specialists from Brook, FPA, Maldaba Ltd, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Julie Bentley, Chief Executive FPA said: "Because My Contraception Tool does the fact finding for you, it takes all the hard work out of choosing contraception. There are fifteen very different methods on offer so deciding between them can be overwhelming. The software in My Contraception Tool is designed to examine contraception from both a health and lifestyle perspective so the results are tailor made to people's needs."

Health professionals can also use the tool by going through the surveys with people during consultations, talking through the options and discussing their advantages with them.