Clinical Fellows in the Abortion Care Priority Setting Partnership: Our Reflections

The James Lind Alliance Abortion Care Priority Setting Project (PSP) is aiming to identify key unanswered questions about abortion care from across the UK, ensuring that future abortion care research reflects the priorities of patients and providers. The College of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare supported the PSP by facilitating the involvement of two trainees (us!), who were embedded within the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) team leading the PSP. As our 12 months draws to a close, we have been reflecting on our year in the role and what we have learned.

We are both ST3s in Community Sexual and Reproductive Health and came into the PSP with a passion for abortion care provision, and an enthusiasm to further our research skills. The position was an amazing opportunity for us to gain experience of working within a national project on abortion care (integrating the NHS and independent sector) and to learn from expert clinicians and researchers.

Since the project launch in December 2025, we have had a busy and varied year. From our first day, we were involved in Steering Group meetings, working alongside leaders in abortion care to contribute to defining the PSP scope and remit. Throughout the project, we have been supported and encouraged by this network: we have learned so much from their guidance, and clinical and research expertise. We are grateful for the opportunity to build these relationships, which will be so important in our future careers as abortion care providers and researchers.

We began the year by creating two supporting documents to understand the current UK landscape of abortion care, and abortion care research. Firstly, we produced a literature review of all recent systematic reviews and meta-analyses regarding abortion care in the UK. Secondly, we created a summary of the (very different) legal and service delivery frameworks for abortion in each of the four nations – England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. We reflected on known gaps in research, imbalances in abortion care across the UK, and how these disparities not only impact our everyday jobs in abortion care but have consequences which ripple across whole healthcare systems.

The initial survey was disseminated in Spring 2026, inviting patients, those supporting them, and abortion providers to submit unanswered questions about abortion care. We received over 700 questions from over 240 people. The questions that we received were well considered, with a huge scope of topics covered. It was privilege to see the positive public engagement with abortion care, and the collective push for this field’s improvement. This pool of qualitative data was carefully analysed – we themed every response question, creating representative summary questions for each. These were each discussed with experts from the steering group to produce a list of approximately 50 summary questions which we felt completely represented the questions raised during the first survey.

We then reviewed published research papers and guidelines for each of these 50 questions, to ensure that they were not already answered. We refined the questions once again into a finished set, which represent both the initial survey responses and reflect the current evidence base.

This finalised list of summary questions will be for public review in the second survey, to allow patients, providers and those supporting people through abortions to produce a shortlist. A final workshop in late Autumn 2026 will the use this shortlist to establish a ‘Top 10’ of abortion care research questions for the UK.

We have both learned a huge amount from our year working on the PSP. From a research perspective we have both improved our literature reviews, search protocols, and qualitative analysis, and learned to work within the internationally renowned JLA PSP methodology. Working collaboratively on such a large dataset, on a project that requires absolute transparency and clear working, we’ve been able to cultivate digital communication and organisation skills. And we’ve been delighted to have time built into our weeks, around busy clinical jobs and exams, to develop this way.

Patients, providers, and those supporting them, are the centre of care: research should reflect what they want to know. We are so proud to have contributed to laying the foundations for this.