Member Spotlights
Planned Parenthood of New York City
New York, NY
Planned Parenthood of New York City (PPNYC) is one of the largest and oldest Planned Parenthood affiliates in the country, and is an advocate for and provider of reproductive health care and education for New Yorkers. PPNYC’s four health centers in Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Staten Island and its mobile medical unit serve more than 50,000 clients annually, offering gynecological care, contraception, pregnancy testing, testing and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), HIV testing and counseling, intimate partner violence (IPV) screening and counseling, and male services.
PPNYC’s client profile reflects the diversity of New York City. Approximately 31% of PPNYC patients are African American, 29% are Latino/a, 24% are Caucasian, and 5% are Asian. Medical interpretation for non-English speaking clients is available through interpreter services by telephone and 25 health center staff trained to provide medical interpretation. In 2011, more than 75% of PPNYC’s clients were under the age of 30 and the vast majority were women. Sixty-seven percent of PPNYC’s clients were insured by Medicaid, paid reduced rates on the sliding fee scale, or received services for free. Health services provided during 2011 included 56,000 visits for family planning, almost 84,000 STD tests, 25,000 HIV tests, 9,000 Pap tests, and over 10,000 pregnancy tests. In addition, PPNYC provided over 17,000 abortions, 28% of which were medication abortions and 92% of which were performed in the first trimester.
Three of PPNYC’s health centers receive a combination of state funds and federal Title X funding. The Bronx, Brooklyn, and Staten Island centers tend to serve a more borough-specific population. Additionally, the Margaret Sanger Center in lower Manhattan is the only center in PPNYC’s network that provides mid-trimester abortions, thereby drawing clients from all five boroughs. PPNYC’s newest center in Staten Island is currently open three days a week and provides various contraceptive methods, emergency contraception, pregnancy testing, STD testing/treatment (including the HPV vaccine), HIV testing/counseling, male reproductive health services, and sexual health education. Advance practice clinicians (APCs) provide the care for all of PPNYC’s family planning and medication abortion services. APCs include nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and certified nurse midwives. Medical doctors (obstetrician/gynecologists and family practice physicians) staff PPNYC’s surgical abortion services.
One unique characteristic of PPNYC’s health centers is its integrated entitlement insurance model. PPNYC has 11 staff members situated at the four health centers to provide public insurance application assistance for its clients. In 2011, PPNYC successfully obtained Medicaid coverage for close to 7,000 clients. The entitlement staff is part of PPNYC’s clinical model and thus public assistance screening and enrollment is offered to every client who either calls the PPNYC centralized appointment system or walks in to one of PPNYC’s health centers for services.
PPNYC’s Project Street Beat (PSB) is an innovative, client-focused, street-based HIV prevention and access-to-care program that serves women, men, and teens that live and work on New York City’s streets. PSB travels to neighborhoods in minivans and mobile medical units, and the HIV prevention staff connects those with the highest risk for HIV/AIDS to health care. PSB clients include intravenous drug users, other substance users, homeless people, commercial sex workers, and other people at risk. The program is run in both day and night shifts, and helps clients move from day-to-day survival into a safer, healthier lifestyle.
Programs and services that PPNYC offers at no cost through the PSB program include: basic survival services; rapid HIV/AIDS testing, education, and prevention interventions; individual and group counseling; harm reduction services; linkages to medical care for HIV-positive individuals; medical services in the mobile medical unit, including reproductive and primary health care; and case management. In 2011, PSB had 63,660 encounters and administered more than 6,700 HIV rapid tests. PSB offers evidence-based group interventions such as Sista to Sista, a program tailored to African-American women; Safety Counts, which is tailored to intravenous drug users and other substance users; and Healing Our Women, which helps women of color who have experienced trauma to reduce their HIV-risk behaviors, increase HIV treatment adherence, and decrease symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
In addition, nearly 20,000 New Yorkers are reached annually through PPNYC’s community-based educational programs. These programs provide medically accurate and age-appropriate sex education to youth and adults, along with training on healthy relationships, parent-child communication, and healthy decision-making. The programs focus on low-income communities such as the South Bronx, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Bushwick, and Central and East Harlem - areas where needs are great and where poverty plays a major role in health care and educational disparities. PPNYC works in after-school settings to provide age-appropriate sex education to 11-13 year olds, using peer support to reach young adults and parents, and offers training and technical assistance to help youth-serving professionals and their organizations become more effective sex educators. PPNYC is a recent recipient of a federal Office of Adolescent Health (OAH) Teen Pregnancy Prevention Grant, which helps support these programs.
PPNYC also plays a unique role as a reproductive health advocate by bringing the voices of its clients and its perspective as a provider to its public policy work at all levels of government. In New York City and Albany, the state’s capital, PPNYC focuses on strengthening and protecting access to care and education, particularly for those at highest risk. PPNYC and its advocacy partners work to expose the devastating potential of policies designed to restrict access to women’s health services, along with the distorted facts and hypocrisy that lie at the heart of such efforts. Thanks to this collective work, New York State has not faced the onslaught of restrictions that have been considered in many states across the country.
However, an anti-choice majority in the New York State Senate presents a continued threat to reproductive freedom and progressive legislation in Albany, against which PPNYC must remain continually vigilant. Some of PPNYC’s key priorities this year are to support passage of the Reproductive Health Act (RHA) to strengthen and update New York State’s protections around reproductive choice; push for a statewide mandate for sex education in the public schools; and monitor the implementation of state health exchanges to ensure access to comprehensive and confidential reproductive health services.
***
Visit PPNYC on the web at: www.plannedparenthood.org/nyc