Early-release course

You are accessing an early-release version of this course, produced by the WHO Academy. We encourage you to provide feedback on your learning experience. We will use your feedback to adapt and improve the course and the WHO Academy online platform.

About this course

The COVID-19 pandemic created a gap in access to family planning services, affecting primarily women and girls. Drug shops and community pharmacies are important sources of supply for contraceptives and trusted sources of healthcare in many countries. This course addresses an important service gap for health workers in pharmacies and drug stores. It focuses on building competencies to provide six over-the-counter contraception options in a people-centred and non-judgemental way.

Who is this course for?

Health workers providing over-the-counter contraception in pharmacies and drug stores, including pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, doctors, nurses, community doctors, traditional health attendants and community health workers.

What will you learn?

In this self-paced course, you will learn how to improve access to self-care contraceptive interventions in pharmacies and drugstores through:

• The principles of being prepared to provide appropriate care to clients, including appropriate follow-up support.
• Decision-making on how to counsel, inform and provide a client with contraceptive pills, condoms and the self-injectable method.

Assessment and Award

You will receive a WHO Academy Award of Completion for modules 2-5 if you complete all the learning activities. These awards are saved in your ‘My Achievements’ space and can be downloaded and shared.

Learning experience

Five self-paced, online modules: you can complete these in any order, but we recommend you begin with module 1.

• In module 1, review the key principles of being prepared to provide self-care contraceptives through a personal story.
• In modules 2-4, counsel and provide six clients with the contraceptive method of their choice.
• In module 5, learn the principles of follow-up and support for clients seeking contraception.
• Additional learning resources available to download.