Why Family Planning Clinics Are So Critical to Women's Health Care

Four of every 10 women who visit family planning clinics in the U.S. say it is their only source of health care, according to a new survey by Guttmacher Institute.

"These findings don't really come as a surprise,"  Rachel Benson Gold, director of policy analysis for the institute, tells TakePart. "We have long known that women across the country look to family planning clinics for their health care."

While there have been other studies looking at women who obtain their health care at family planning clinics, Gold says she believes this is the first to look at the issue at clinics nationwide.

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The researchers surveyed more than 2,000 women who sought care at 22 clinics in 13 states.

The findings do demonstrate the important role of these clinics--which is destined to grow as the components of the Affordable Care Act (aka Obama care) go into effect, Gold says. "These findings are a clear indication of the critical role that family planning clinics play as the entry point to the health care system for many women," Gold says. It's critical, she adds, that federal and state governments invest in the clinics to ensure access.

"This care allows women and couples to avoid unintended pregnancies, plan their families and obtain a wide range of preventive care services critical to their health and wellbeing," Jennifer Frost, another report co-author, says in a statement.

Their report is published online Nov. 9 in Women's Health Issues.

In the survey, conducted from October, 2011 to January, 2012, the researchers also found that 6 of  10 women had had a health care appointment with another provider in the past year, but chose the family planning center for birth control needs.

Four in 10 of the women surveyed had no public or private insurance. But Gold says she doesn't think that  finding and the finding that 4 of 10 chose family planning clinics as their only source of health care are necessarily related.

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Women had four common reasons for choosing the clinics for their health care. These included respectful staffs, confidential care, free or low-cost services and staff who were knowledgeable about women's health.

The new data  ''reaffirms the critical role that women's health centers like Planned Parenthood play in delivering high-quality preventive health care to women across the country,"  says Dana Singiser, Planned Parenthood's vice president for public policy and government relations, in a statement.

Currently, more than 8,000 publicly funded family planning centers provide care to more than seven million women a year, according to Guttmacher.

The centers provide not only birth control and family planning services, but also preventive health services such as Pap tests and referral to other health care needs not available through the center. For instance, if a woman is found to have high blood pressure, she could be referred for further assessment.

Under the Affordable Care Act, 12.8 million women of child-bearing age will become newly eligible for insurance in 2014, public health officials say, making family planning centers more important than ever.

Funding for the clinics comes partly from the Title X Family Planning Program, enacted in 1970 as part of the Public Health Service Act. Low-income patients are a priority. 

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Kathleen Doheny is a Los Angeles journalist who writes about health. She doesn't believe inmiracle cures, but continues to hope someone will discover a way for joggers to maintain their pace.