Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #106154

Maxine Hayes, MD, MPH, Washington State Department of Health, PO Box 47890, Olympia, WA 98504, (360) 236-4030, maxine.hayes@doh.wa.gov, Marian Weldin, MA, Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH), 1455 NW Leary Way, Seattle, WA 98107, and Kim Kelly, ND, MPH, Sabre Sciences, 2233 Faraday Avenue, Carlsbad, CA 98107.

From 1997 to 2001 Washington State's Department of Health (DOH) and Department of Social and Health services (DSHS) and PATH, a nongovernmental organization, collaborated and successfully developed strategies to increase awareness of emergency contraception (EC) as a critical and underused option for reducing unintended pregnancy. By working to comparative strengths, these partners successfully leveraged existing programs (e.g., Family Planning; First Steps; Maternal and Child Health; and Women, Infants, and Children) to identify innovative, effective, and sustainable mechanisms to make emergency contraceptive pills (ECPs) easily available to low-income women.

The proposed presentation will describe how this partnership strengthened health and social service programs and led to new ECPs service delivery mechanisms. Discussions will include a description of the background policy-level work and partnerships that laid the groundwork for strong family planning programs. Specifically, how the DOH and DSHS' Office of Medical Assistance Administration (DSHS/MAA) jointly gathered key data, which illustrated the outcomes of unintended pregnancy and used the data to gain political, institutional, and financial support for family planning. The presentation will also specify the systems developed by DOH and DSHS/MAA, which allowed them to mutually reinforce and take advantage of opportunities presented by each other's programs, and ultimately enabled the DOH and DSHS/MAA to expand low-income and underserved populations access to EC through multiple programs. The presentation will share lessons learned on how EC became a mainstream strategy to prevent unintended pregnancy.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify stakeholders and potential collaborators who should be included in efforts to expand access to ECPs through state systems.
• Assess possibilities for expanding access to ECPs through another state’s existing programs and systems.
• Apply lessons learned from Washington’s experience with emergency contraception integration to another state.

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.