BY: LORI KERSEY – NOVEMBER 6, 2023 5:57 AM
The West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources says it is delaying plans to change the way it distributes federal family planning funding to clinics in the state.
Title X grants, from the federal Office of Population Affairs, provide a range of family planning services, including birth control, pregnancy testing and counseling, and sexually transmitted infection services. Last year the program awarded DHHR more than $2.4 million.
Since 2003, the DHHR has had a contract, or memorandum of understanding, with clinics in the state to distribute the Title X funding.
The department announced to Title X clinic administrators in July it would discontinue its MOU process and instead establish a grant application process for the upcoming year that begins April 1, 2023.
However, an update to clinic administrators this week says those changes are on hold. The update came from James Jeffries, director of DHHR’s Office of Maternal, Child and Family Health; Jennifer Hancock, director of the Division of Women’s and Family Health and Deena Ellison, director of the West Virginia Family Planning Program.
“Based on feedback from stakeholders, the [West Virginia Family Planning Program] will be delaying efforts to establish subrecipient grant agreements for the upcoming performance period,” the update on Tuesday said. “The MOU process will continue through the next performance period and will be used to collect and report quantitative and qualitative data to inform any future changes in programming.”
The delay followed “roundtable discussions” with stakeholders and interviews with service providers, DHHR said.
Leaders of some health departments are concerned the potential change might cause them to lose access to Title X funding altogether.
The money allows the Wyoming County Health Department in Pineville to distribute birth control and condoms, as well as purchase supplies like gowns needed for women’s health services, said Gena Carter, the department’s administrator and director of nursing.
Prior to Tuesday’s announcement of the delay, Carter was awaiting information about the grant process. She said her department definitely planned to apply.
“If we lose family planning in Wyoming County, it will definitely have a lot of impact on our county because people don’t have transportation,” Carter said. “We have a really good, strong family planning program here. So it’ll be devastating for our rural community.”
Carter said the family planning program is aimed at, for instance, teenagers who want birth control but don’t want their parents to know they’re sexually active, or a woman who wants pregnancy care without it be billed to her insurance to avoid alerting an abusive partner.
“That’s just some of the patients that will suffer — people don’t have insurance,” she said. “If they have to travel and they don’t have transportation out of the county then it’s just not going to get done. So you’re going to see an increase with cancers and pregnancy. And we already have an overpopulation of unwanted kids…”
The Mid-Ohio Valley Health Department had opted to drop the family planning funding beginning March 31, 2024 rather than apply to the state for the funding, clinic supervisor Christi Merrill said.
“We do have a women’s health clinic anyway, so I feel like we’ll have resources and programs for the girls that had family planning to come to those,” Merrill said. “So that’s a good thing.”
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