Tuesday, April 29, 2025
4/29/2025
Title X family planning services for southern and southwestern New Hampshire - Planned Parenthood of Northern New England (PPNNE) has 50 years’ experience providing high quality family planning and related health care services to 40,000 women and men annually in New Hampshire (NH), Vermont, and Maine. We have been the largest family planning provider in New Hampshire for 22 years, serving over 11,000 women, men, and teens each year through five health centers, and an additional 2,000 through our outreach and education programming. There is currently a severe lack of publicly funded family planning services in New Hampshire. 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. PPNNE is a long-time recipient of Title X funding in NH. Previously a subrecipient of the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services (NH DHHS), 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. In July of 2019, PPNNE and 6 other recipients of Title X funding in NH (7 out of 10 family planning providers) 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. A PPNNE education and outreach campaign was crucial in ensuring the NH legislature allocate state funding to replace the Title X funds for a two-year period, through June 2021. Unfortunately, the current NH 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. 2020 and 2021 were challenging years for PPNNE. Transitions in two key leadership positions, staff burnout due to the Covid-19 pandemic, inaugural union negotiations in all three states, impacts of the July 3rd ransomware attack (no HIPAA breach), and the “Great resignation” have been highly disruptive to PPNNE operations. Throughout this time, however, our health center doors have remained open. PPNNE experienced an overall decrease in access to services throughout the pandemic due to staffing shortages and patients delaying health care visits. PPNNE followed CDC recommendations to delay preventive services in outpatient settings. We are interested in getting back to being able to see all patients for all services again. PPNNE has projected a patient count of 6,150 for the first year of this Title X cycle. The projection is based on historical data as well as developing trends due to the ongoing pandemic. Patient count targets for subsequent years of this Title X cycle will be reassessed based on prior year actuals and future impacts of the pandemic. Staffing shortages and pandemic management has impacted capacity for two years. PPNNE is steadily building back capacity across our 10 Title X health centers as conditions permit in 2021 and into 2022. Our application requests $670,000 (our 2019 Title X funding level), with a cost per patient of $105.56. We understand this represents a per patient cost increase from previous years. The barriers we outlined in this application – the pandemic landscape, staffing conditions and current organizational change efforts – can and most certainly will have impacts beyond our control. Re-entering OPA’s Title X Program will help PPNNE return to pre-pandemic family planning service levels in NH, reestablishing access to much needed federal funding.
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).