Thursday, April 3, 2025
4/3/2025
Maryland Family Planning/Title X Program - The Maryland Family Planning Program (MFPP) has partnered with the Title X Program to provide family planning and reproductive health services to Marylanders for over thirty years. The MFPP supports clinics in 22 of Maryland’s 24 jurisdictions and serves clients of all identities and ages, including adolescents, with a priority given to persons from low-income families and from communities that have been historically disadvantaged. These clinics provide comprehensive family planning services with a broad range of FDA-approved contraceptive methods and integrate this care with related preventive health services. In this way, the MFPP serves as a key resource to counter the historic disparities that still prevent all Marylanders from living healthy lives. The MFPP requests $5,000,000 in Title X funding to combine with the State of Maryland’s strong commitment to providing family planning and related preventive health services. This partnership will address the Office of Population Affairs’ priorities in the following ways: 1. Advance health equity through the delivery of Title X services A)Identify the communities in Maryland that would benefit most from greater access to family planning and related preventive health services and learn how these communities would prefer to access services. The MFPP will contract with a vendor to conduct a statewide Needs Assessment in Spring 2022 to support this activity;B)Evaluate the reported racial and ethnic identities of clinic staff members in the clinics so that the MFPP can encourage the hiring of staff that will proportionally match the identity of the client population. This activity will initially be supported through the Needs Assessment;C)Continue to integrate preventive health services with the traditional Title X services, including Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT), hypertension screening, and closed-loop referrals to community resources;D)Integrate the MFPP with other statewide public health initiatives that were created as part of the State’s commitment to reducing racial disparities in severe maternal morbidity events;E)Expand access to long-acting reversible contraception and reproductive justice-informed contraceptive counseling through a three-year quality improvement initiative that combines training and clinic-based operational support for clinicians who do not directly practice in a MFPP delegate site. 2. Improve and expand access to Title X services A)Partner with existing Maryland Department of Health initiatives to make Title X clinics more youth- and LGBTQ+-friendly;B)Continue to expand upon telehealth services, mobile clinics, and remote provision of contraceptives that have been established or enhanced during the COVID-19 Pandemic;C)Leverage the Maryland School-Based Health Center Program’s transition to the Maryland Department of Health on July 1, 2022 to expand access to Title X services in School-Based Health Centers. 3. Deliver Title X services of the highest quality A)Ensure high-quality family planning services are delivered in MFPP clinics by regularly updating the Clinical Guidelines to include relevant updates to the Quality Family Planning Services recommendations and nationally recognized standards of care;B)Provide relevant technical assistance and training through office hours with the Program’s medical director and the popular annual Reproductive Health Roundtable. The MFPP includes a robust quality assurance program which ensures that clinics are compliant with requirements of the Title X statute, legislative mandates, and program regulations or rules. This quality assurance program includes the collection, reporting, and internal analysis of FPAR data. The MFPP looks forward to continuing to partner with the Office of Population Affairs and its Title X grants. The Program brings extensive experience, organization, community relationships, and passion for the continued push for health equity in Maryland.
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).