Thank you so much.
This is an area where midwifery is greatly underutilized, as Dr. Bourret alluded to earlier.
It is within the scope of a midwife to provide cervical cancer screening, to be providing contraception, including the placement of intrauterine devices and the new Implanon contraceptive insert. It's in our scope of practice to be testing and treating for sexually transmitted and blood-borne infections.
However, in some jurisdictions, this is with an advanced scope of training. It is not accepted in all jurisdictions. There are also constraints, in that we are limited to providing this care, in most cases, though not all, to people who are pregnant or in the first three months postpartum.
This is an area where midwives could be providing a much larger role and having a bigger impact in helping to meet that unmet need for contraception in Canada, for long-acting, reversible contraception in particular, and that culturally safe component of care.
There are pilot projects, in Ontario in particular, such as the MATCH program, where midwives are working with delegation of function to be able to provide these services to people outside of that child-bearing year, as well as to provide abortion services. These are areas where we can expand.