Tuesday, April 29, 2025
4/29/2025
Funding to Address Dire Need for Family Planning Services in New Hampshire - There is currently a severe lack of publicly funded family planning services in New Hampshire (NH). No federal or state funding has reached 15,000 Granite Staters since June 30, 2021. People who already face the greatest barriers to care, including low-income and uninsured people, people of color, LGBTQ people, and people in rural communities have had access to essential sexual and reproductive health care jeopardized. Planned Parenthood of Northern New England (PPNNE) requests $500,000 under the Funding to Address Dire Needs for Family Planning Services funding opportunity (PA-FPH-22-003) to expand access and return to pre-Covid service family planning service provision levels across the southern and southwestern region of the state over the 15-month project period. PPNNE was a Title X grantee from 2012 until our withdrawal from the program in 2019. On July 15, 2019, PPNNE gave our notice of termination pursuant to 45 C.F.R. § 75.372(a)(4). We were compelled by the U.S Department of Health and Human Services’ (“the Department’s”) implementation of the 2019 Final Rule entitled Compliance with Statutory Program Integrity Requirements to terminate our Title X award. PPNNE and 6 other recipients of Title X funding in New Hampshire (7 out of 10) had no choice but to exit the program due to the new rule, leaving over 16,000 patients without access to federally funded family planning services. The New Hampshire legislature allocate state funding to replace the Title X funds for a two-year period, through June 2021. Unfortunately, the current legislature, elected in November of 2020, did not extend this Title X replacement funding. Instead, they actively worked to dismantle the NH Family Planning Program by drastically cutting the overall program budget and rejecting the participation of three major family planning service providers. The final FY21 budget signed into law by Governor Sununu, required NH DHHS to complete additional financial audits of all New Hampshire Family Planning providers to confirm that state family planning funds aren’t used for abortion care. State and federal funds are already prohibited from going toward abortion care. These new audit requirements were politically motivated, overreaching, and unnecessary. PPNNE complied with all requests for information, which took place over the course of the summer and early fall of 2021 for the July 1 contracts that were being voted on. After completing the audit, the NH Department of Health and Human Services stated unequivocally, multiple times that the financial review, clearly showed that no family planning funds had been used for abortion care. Regardless of financial assurances, on September 15, 2021, New Hampshire’s Executive Council voted 4-1 to reject contracts for PPNNE and two other family planning providers who provide abortions in accordance with Title X statutes and regulations. The Executive Council’s vote jeopardizes essential sexual and reproductive health care for those residents who already face the greatest barriers to care, including low-income people, people of color, LGBTQ people, and people in rural communities. This comes in the middle of the worst public health crisis for over a century, as currently New Hampshire is experiencing the highest average daily cases per capita rates of covid-19 infections in the country. The three providers defunded by NH serve 80% of NH’s Title X patients (12,000 patients in 2020). In 2020, PPNNE served 84% of the 12,000 patients (10,872 patients). Of note, while finalizing this grant application for submission, we were notified by the state of NH that a family planning contract for PPNNE for our current fiscal year will again go before the Executive Council on 22 December 2021. The contract being offered is for a mere 5% of PPNNE’s annual public funding in NH. We believe this contract will also be rejected.
HHS’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website provides access to detailed descriptions of grants, loans, aggregated direct payments and other types of financial assistance awarded by the HHS Operating Divisions (OPDIVs) and the Office of the Secretary Staff Divisions (STAFFDIVs).