Understanding the barriers and facilitators to the implementation of the new National Chlamydia Screening Programme (NCSP) policy
In June 2021, Public Health England (PHE) announced changes to the NCSP with a shift to focus on reducing reproductive harm from untreated chlamydia in young women. As such, UKHSA advise that opportunistic screening should focus on women and other people with a womb or ovaries. In practice, this means that chlamydia screening in community settings, such as General Practice and pharmacies, will only be proactively offered to young women. Services provided by sexual health services (SHS) remain unchanged. An initial review of testing and diagnosis data suggests that there has been little or no change in the number or proportion of young men being screened outside of SHS. This suggests that there has been limited implementation of the NCSP policy changes.
Our findings aim to understand barriers and facilitators to the implementation of the new policy to help inform interventions which improve policy implementation fidelity.
