Sexual and reproductive health and rights of young people: how does digitalization in healthcare services in the COVID-19 era impact on accessibility, content and quality of care?

Digital transformation in healthcare has been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Digitalization opens up for breakthroughs in care but there are also challenges.

This project aims to assess the impact of digitalization on healthcare services for sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) of young people aged 16-29-years, by exploring the accessibility, content, and quality of digital SRHR care. The long-term goal is to improve SRHR in this age group.

The project will be coordinated by the SRHR Unit within the Centre for epidemiology and community medicine, Region Stockholm, in collaboration with the Karolinska Institutet.

By taking advantage of existing register linkages covering the whole population of Stockholm County and data from patients’ electronic health records, we will be able to compare young users and non-users of digital SRHR care during years 2020-2022, and how the content and quality of SRHR care may differ between digital consultations and consultations at the clinic.

Additionally, we will use qualitative interviews to explore young people’s and healthcare providers’ perceptions of digital SRHR care.

The timeline for the project is: register data will be analysed years 1-2, health records- and interview data will be collected and analysed years 1-3, drafting of papers will stretch over years 1-4.

The project’s results will be used to optimize and expand digital SRHR care for young people so that SRHR can be improved and made more equitable.