Studies Look at Access to Family Planning Services Provided at Federally Qualified Health Centers

By Rachel Walden — October 9, 2013

A pair of newly published studies in the journal Contraception look at the types and access to family planning services provided at community health clinics that are considered a popular primary care option for low-income women of reproductive age.

The studies, produced by researchers at the George Washington University School of Public Health, examine the services at Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs). These health clinics provide primary and preventive care on a sliding scale, primarily to low-income and uninsured patients. It’s also worth noting that when states attempt to defund Planned Parenthood clinics, these are clinics to which many women may get directed for care.

The authors anticipate that these health centers will become an even more important part of care as the Affordable Care Act is fully implemented and Medicaid is expanded. One of the co-authors is Dr. Susan Wood, who resigned her post as director of the FDA’s Office of Women’s Health in 2005 in protest over delays in approving over-the-counter access to emergency contraception.

In the first study, “Scope of Family Planning Services Available in Federally Qualified Health Centers,” researchers surveyed several hundred FQHCs about on-site care, including approaches to pregnancy prevention and STI/HIV testing and treatment, as well as referrals of patients to other sites, staffing issues, and other aspects of care. While they found that almost all of the FQHCs provided at least one contraceptive method, the type and accessibility of those methods varied.

Slightly more than half of the centers were able to dispense oral contraceptives on site rather than sending patients elsewhere with a prescription. Slightly more than a third (36 percent) offered both oral contraception and longer acting IUDs and/or implants on-site. If a woman has to go to another location, there may be consequences such as incurring lost work time that may make it harder to follow through.

Also, only about a third of the surveyed centers received Title X family planning funding (it’s not clear whether some clinics had not applied, or did apply and were rejected). The researchers found that while pretty much all of the centers provided access to oral contraception, the Title X-funded clinics were more likely to provide the full range of contraceptive options.

A companion paper, “Accessibility of Long Acting Reversible Contraceptives (LARC) in Federally-Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs),” looks specifically at the survey results on long-acting contraceptive options, including intrauterine devices (IUDs) and implants. The study found that slightly more than half of the FQHCs offered IUDs on-site, while about a third offered contraceptive implants on site. For the rest of them, patients would have to be referred elsewhere to receive the devices.

The authors again found that clinics receiving Title X funds were more likely to provide these options.

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