Activists can make a difference by speaking up for youth's right to be responsible. Let policy makers know you support teens' right to access to emergency contraception (EC) without a prescription as a means of avoiding pregnancy following sexual assault, unprotected sex, or contraceptive failure.

1. Learn about what other communities, states, and nations have done.
2. Develop youth adult partnerships. Mobilize teens to take action, create youth-adult partnerships and peer education groups and peer leadership programs that focus on teens' rights to EC.
3. Conduct a survey on Pharmacists' awareness of and attitudes towards EC.
4. Mobilize the community. Present information on EC to youth activist groups, public health officials, school boards, PTAs, community clubs, professional associations, and community-based organizations.
5. Start a public education campaign to raise awareness of and increase support for EC. Ensure that the campaigns are culturally appropriate for the target audience.
6. Develop EC materials that target specific adolescent populations, including teen parents, males, young women of color, runaway and homeless youth, and gay, lesbian, and bisexual teens.
7. Distribute EC materials, such as posters, postcards, and brochures, in community centers, restaurants, retail establishments, arenas, nightclubs, teen centers, and other places that youth frequent, including health clubs and religious institutions.
8. Encourage the entertainment industry to include EC in story lines in shows that target youth.
9. Support progressive legislation to allow collaborative drug therapy agreements—pharmacist and physician protocols that authorize pharmacists to deliver EC in specific situations. Pharmacists can contact the American Pharmaceutical Association to ascertain if collaborative drug therapy agreements are permitted in their states and can work with the Association to implement procedures in their pharmacies.
10. Advocate for funding for special research on adolescents and emergency contraception, including biomedical, programmatic, social science, and service delivery research.
11. Conduct a community-wide EC needs assessment. Through interviews, focus groups and surveys, determine the attitudes and level of knowledge about EC of both teens and adults. Assess service availability through clinics, hospital emergency rooms, rape crisis centers, pharmacies, school-based health centers and clinics.