O-067 An update from the international reproductive health education collaboration
Authors: Harper J , Delbaere I , Ekstrand Ragnar M , Fernandes de Carvalho A , Fincham A , Grace B , Hammarberg K , Soukal Libichova L , Sylvest R , Mocanu E , Simopoulou M 
Published: July 2024

Most people want children, but many do not achieve their parenthood goals. Research shows that both men and women have limited knowledge about fertility and the factors that affect it. This includes poor knowledge about the impact of age, the most important determinant of the chance to conceive and have a healthy baby. As age at first birth is increasing in many countries, people increasingly seek assisted reproductive technology (ART) treatment due to age-related infertility. To allow people to make informed decisions about if and when to have children and to avoid age-related infertility, they need evidence-based and accessible information about fertility.

Fertility awareness is defined by the World Health Organisation as ‘the understanding of reproduction, fecundity, fecundability, and related individual risk factors (e.g. advanced age, sexual health factors such as sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and lifestyle factors such as smoking, obesity) and non-individual risk factors (e.g. environmental and workplace factors); including the awareness of societal and cultural factors affecting options to meet reproductive family planning, as well as family building needs’.

In 2019, an international collective of reproductive health researchers and health professionals convened to promote fertility education for the public, teachers, and health professionals. Initially called the International Fertility Education Initiative (IFEI), in 2022 the group integrated into ESHRE. In 2023, the group rebranded as the International Reproductive Health Education Collaboration (IRHEC) (www.eshre.eu/IRHEC) to reflect a life course perspective that goes beyond childbearing and includes education about all aspects of reproductive health, from puberty to menopause.

The mission statement of the IRHEC is ‘To increase reproductive health awareness using the life course approach, in order to improve reproductive health and facilitate decision-making in family planning among adolescents, people of reproductive age, primary healthcare, education professionals, and policymakers through development, evaluation and dissemination of inclusive educational resources.’ We aim for our website to be a repository for a range of reproductive health educational resources for the public, health and education professionals, and researchers. This includes some resources developed by the group.

In this first IRHEC report to the ESHRE conference we will describe the committee structure, the processes for joining the IRHEC Network and for nominations and elections of committee members and introduce current IRHEC committee members. We will also provide updates on completed resources to be launched during 2024 and on current and potential future projects including:

• An updated fertility education poster for young people. It is based on a poster developed in 2019 which has been redesigned in response to research conducted with young people in Denmark, Sweden, and the UK. The poster is available in many different languages on the IRHEC website.

• Twelve information leaflets with more in depth information on various aspects of reproductive health which have been co-designed with young people. These are also available and free to download from our website.

• After years of working with schools, and a public consultation last year, IRHEC has developed a resource to help teachers deliver reproductive health education to students. It is freely available to all teachers around the world and can be used in full or in part depending on teachers’ needs.

• Preparations are underway to seek funding to evaluate the teachers’ resource. We plan to use qualitative research in the first instance to explore teachers’ views on the usefulness of the resource, what parts they would use, and whether the topics covered, and the level of detail are appropriate.

• We are also examining how social media can be used to deliver reproductive health education.

Through this work we want to empower everyone with evidence-based education on reproductive health.