Emergency contraception, like Plan B, can prevent pregnancy if taken within 72 hours of having unprotected sex. It has been available without a prescription for people above 18 since 2006, and it’s been available to people of all ages without an ID since 2013. But in some pharmacies, emergency contraception is still kept behind the counter, which can be a major hurdle for anyone who feels awkward or anxious about purchasing the pill. The barriers to access are even higher for people who live in a place where pharmacists can refuse access to emergency contraception as they see fit. For students on isolated college campuses, distance is an additional hurdle, which is why an engineer at Stanford University helped develop a high-tech vending machine that allows students to confidentially get access to emergency contraception (and condoms) at any hour of the day. With the installation of the contraception-selling vending machine, a national conversation has sparked about normalizing emergency contraception to make it more readily accessible. Since the machine’s debut in 2017, many universities around America have installed or have plans to install these vending machines.
Universities are installing vending machines that offer emergency contraception
More of Today's Solutions
Dinner scraps are rebuilding California’s lost oyster reefs
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM What if scraps from a dinner could become a habitat? That's the basic premise of the Shells for ...
Read More5 habits that separate growing teams from stagnant ones
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM The strategy is fine. The team is capable. But at the end of the quarter, the needle hasn’t ...
Read MoreHow a rickshaw driver’s son beat the odds to join a famed UK ballet school
Kamal Singh was 17-years-old when he first became transfixed by ballet dancers in a Bollywood film. At that moment, the son of a rickshaw ...
Read MoreFood sequencing: how eating in the right order can boost your health
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM When we think about balanced eating, most of us focus on what’s on our plate—fiber, protein, vitamins, and ...
Read More
