What’s Euki, you ask? Named after eucalyptus, a plant known for soothing and wellness, Euki is an app for tracking sexual and reproductive health. It provides non-biased health information on everything from sexuality to abortion to STIs.
Hi! 👋🏾 We're Euki, a new app for anyone who wants accurate, complete, and unbiased info about sex and reproductive health!
— EukiApp (@EukiApp) September 16, 2019
Learn more here from @WomenHelpOrg: https://t.co/UTYFop71Bu
After using Euki for two weeks, here are my thoughts:
As an app for tracking sexual and menstrual health, Euki works like many other apps with similar designs. The user can track their period, detailing everything from how heavy their flow is to what menstrual products they used. The user can also track indicators of their sexual health, like what contraceptive(s) they used in their last sexual experience. Euki also tracks various side effects of menstrual cycles, including acne, cravings, nausea, tender breasts, and fluctuations in emotions, as well as pregnancy and STI test results.
At first while using the app I was curious about why I would need to document things like nausea or tender breasts besides personal documentation. After doing some research on the app, I realized that in the case the user were to have increasingly irregular symptoms, they could look back at this documentation to determine if they may be pregnant or have an STI. For users in the U.S., this information couldn’t be more important–87% of counties in the United States don’t have an abortion provider, and in the middle of on onslaught of anti-abortion legislation throughout the country, many states have restricted access to abortion more than ever in our post-Roe society. Since many states have changed or are in the process of changing their laws to outlaw abortion past the sixth week of pregnancy, weeks before most people realize they are pregnant, tracking one’s menstrual cycle and symptoms to detect pregnancy earlier on is critical. And this is where Euki goes above and beyond similar apps.
Euki stands out in the information that it provides to the user and its focus on normalizing all aspects of sexual health. Euki’s home screen is user friendly, both in design and information, featuring a series of folders full of information on abortion, contraception, sexuality, miscarriage, pregnancy, and STIs. If a user suspects that they might be pregnant, they can go to the pregnancy folder and receive information on parenting options, hotlines, and abortion options. If they decide to learn more about abortion, there’s an entire folder with information on types of abortions, abortion laws, clinic care, aftercare, and paying for an abortion, as well as abortion stories and frequently asked questions. If the user wants a walk-through on the different types of abortions, Euki provides detailed step-by-step information for both medication abortion and surgical abortion based on the date of the user’s last period.
Euki also provides detailed information on birth control, mentioning each form of contraception, how to use it, its effectiveness, possible side effects, and how to get it. A feature I particularly enjoyed was the quiz on which birth control works best for you. Under the contraception folder, you can enter information on your sexual health and reasons for using birth control. While I knew about different forms of birth control before taking the quiz, I was surprised to find another form of contraception suitable to my preferences that I would be willing to try. However, one criticism I have of this section of the app is that the possible negative side effects listed were more closely linked to user error, while birth control medication has other more serious side effects based on the type of pill. I wish that Euki had included a disclaimer about this in the side effects section, as there is real risk that the pill may be linked to depression.
For those concerned about privacy, Euki keeps information private to the user. If the user wants to add a password, they can. But Euki goes even further. If there is ever an instance in which a user is being forced to unlock their app, they can put in a false password which opens a fake home screen. Additionally, there is an option to delete all personal data with one push of a button, and another setting that allows for more frequent data deletion. One may wonder if simply deleting the data on the app is enough. Euki does not store any of the user’s information in any back-end system. It is also not tied to your email or phone number so only the user has it and once it is deleted, it is gone for good.
Overall, Euki is user-friendly and contains great information about all different areas of sexual health. But Euki goes beyond this: it combats stereotypes and pushes back on new anti-abortion legislation by providing information, normalizing abortion and sexual health, and allowing people to have control over their sexual lives.