California Family Planning Council

Policy Platform Statement

California Family Planning Council (CFPC) is a non-profit organization, established to coordinate the distribution of Title X dollars to family planning providers throughout the State of California, excluding Los Angeles County. The Council receives federal family planning funds which it in turn allocates to 48 delegate agencies which provide direct services to low-income clients. In addition to acting as an intermediary to funding sources, the Council provides fiscal and quality assurance monitoring of its delegate agencies; offers training to clinical health professionals and other staff; and provides technical assistance, data processing and related services to contracting agencies.

The mission of CFPC is to provide leadership in family planning and reproductive health care and to ensure the development and provision of quality, comprehensive, cost effective, voluntary reproductive health care services to individuals in need.

Introduction

Family planning is a vital component to the well-being of women, men, teenagers, and to our community-at-large. It gives individuals opportunities to plan and space their pregnancies (families) in order to achieve life goals and self-sufficiency.

Each year 5.2 million people in California have no health insurance, nearly 80% of them are working parents and their children. California spends more than 4 billion dollars annually on families begun by teenage mothers.

Access to screening and early detection of cervical and breast cancers, and sexually transmitted diseases, averts higher financial and emotional costs associated with later stage disease. Various studies have demonstrated the cost-effectiveness of family planning services. It has been estimated that every public dollar invested in family planning saves from $4 to $12 public dollars in averting costs attendant to unintended pregnancy, including MediCal deliveries and abortions, AFDC, food stamps and other social services.

As the Country moves toward needed reform of our health care systems, comprehensive reproductive health care services must be a preventive, primary health service. These services must be voluntary and confidential, as well as common practice within a health care delivery system which emphasizes prevention of disease injury and death, and the promotion of health and well-being. CFPC envisions a health care system in which:

• All residents (and citizens) have access to comprehensive health care services including a full range of sexual and reproductive health care services
• Reproductive health services are recognized and treated as a primary care entry point in to the health care system
• Ensure access to services at sites that are convenient, culturally sensitive to their clients and community, and guarantee confidentiality
• The delivery of services by appropriately trained nurse practitioners, nurse midwives, physicians assistants and other health professionals is encouraged and financed
• Mechanisms to ensure positive and demonstrable relationship among client needs, services delivered, technologies used, costs and outcomes are developed, monitored and evaluated
• Community-based health education is incorporated
• Community-based providers (in California - licenced free and community clinics) are supported and integrated into new networks created or encouraged by federal and/or state health plans

Therefore, the California Family Planning Council will actively promote the following:

• Universal access to health services
• Inclusion of comprehensive reproductive health care services in all health care plans
• All individuals, based on their own consent, shall have access to information about human sexuality and reproductive health services
• Self-referral and individual choice in provider of confidential reproductive health care services
• Inclusion of family planning clinic as 'points of entry' and 'essential community providers' in developing health care systems Expansion of categorical funding systems - specifically Title X and the California Office of Family Planning - for those individuals who cannot or choose not to use their assigned primary care provider for family planning services
• All minors, based on their own consent, shall have access to age appropriate reality based sexuality education, and reproductive health care services

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