School birth control service defended

http://www.prweek.com/uk/news/1117196/on-agenda-school-birth-control-service-defended/

I found the above article on PR Week. It explains that Solent NHS Trust partnered with nine Southampton schools (in the UK) to launch a sexual health advice program and contraception program to drive down teenage pregnancy. Southampton has one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates in the UK.

Although this new program was launched in 2009, the controversy came back into debate last week when a mother complained that her 13-year-old had a contraceptive implant fitted at school without her consent.

NHS Southampton and Solent NHS trust in house comms teams joined together to create a reactive PR strategy to rebuttal the negative publicity. They issued a statement on February 7th broadly defining and defeneding the scope of the service provided. In fact, the teenage pregnancy rates have dropped 22% since the service was started!!!

The story was widely covered across the UK.

I think the numbers do the talking; there clearly was a pregnancy problem in the area and the program has reached its intended goal of reducing these rates. The two organizations did a good job of defending their stance.