When the CHCs Aren’t Yet Good Enough to Offer as PP Alternatives
See Researching the CHCs for questions to help compare services and facilities, to figure out if a CHC is adequate or needs improvement.
Improving CHCs (1.5 minutes)
Lack of Resources? The Federal Legislature
Some U.S. Representatives take a keen interest in having CHCs or RHCs in their districts be available and of good quality. It’s very common for them to secure federal grants to expand or improve the CHCs. The more help you can give by being specific about what the need is, the better they can be talked into trying to get that federal grant. Some U.S. Senators will also want to see this in their states, so bringing problems to their attention may help.
You can find the appropriate Congressional representative with the zip code of the CHC.
Lack of Resources? State Legislatures
In some states, the legislature has a pro-life majority, and they can be talked into some of these ideas by pointing out the impact on PP.
In other states, the majority favors abortion and will regard these ideas with suspicion – but still, helping out health centers is helping out health centers. So initiatives to help CHCs may be legislation that can pass when other pro-life kinds of legislation won’t.
- Where the CHCs in the vicinity don’t provide all the non-abortion services PP does, they can be given more resources with the mandate to provide the services they don’t yet offer.
- Where the CHCs are readily available but too small to take an extra patient load, they can be given more resources to expand.
- Where the CHCs are readily available but charge more or have fewer hours or longer wait times, they can be given more resources to fix those problems.
Lack of Resources? Foundation Grants
Every point above under State Legislatures can be applied to getting local foundation grants. Foundations with pro-life leanings can be educated about the aspect of providing alternatives to PP. Those that aren’t particularly pro-life can still be appealed to as a matter of helping community health.
The Problem is Practices: Direct Requests
What if the problem isn’t resources, but with the organization itself? For example, we found a Yelp review complaining one CHC had a requirement that you can’t make an appointment until within two weeks of the appointed time – no earlier. This could be a problem for working women with strict requirements on when they can take off. It’s also a bureaucratic rule that’s probably not due to lack of resources. It may be that a bunch of letters, a petition drive, or proper publicity could get them to change the policy based on education about its impact.
The Problem is Practices: The Director and the Board of Directors
However, it’s not just a matter of policy – could it be a marker of a lack of warmth in the staff towards their patients? Is this a sign of a deeper problem, a coldness that could make the medical experience unpleasant? That would be far harder to figure out, and harder to do something about.
But by definition, federally-qualified Community Health Centers are supposed to have boards of directors derived from the local community. We have word from people who have experience that there are times when personal interaction with the director or the board of the directors could show possibilities for communicating the importance of friendliness and accommodating needs.
Other Clinics?
We may not be limited to federally-listed CHCs and Rural Health Clinics to provide good PP alternatives. Are there other clinics or doctor’s offices that might be suitable? Or might become suitable if they were talked into taking Medicaid payments? We have ideas on looking for other clinics on our page: Action – No CHCs Nearby.
Also, are we limited to those CHCs that are within 5 miles? In some places, we may well be, but in others, a lot of the potential PP clients live further away anyway. The search for an alternative CHC can be cast wider. To check, you can put the PP center’s address (or any address) into the federal Find a Health Center page.
More improving (1.6 minutes)
What if There are Already Plenty?
Quite a few places, especially in large cities, already list a dozen or more CHCs within the vicinity of the PP center. If there’s at least one excellent CHC near the PP center, well located and clearly better in objective and accurate terms, then we can feel comfortable sending people there. In that case, does it really matter whether the other ones aren’t good enough to refer people, since we’re not referring people to them?
If research has been done to ascertain which CHCs are suitable and finds some are and others aren’t, there are still two ways the information on unsuitable CHCs could be valuable:
The approach of publishing a consumer’s guide to the different CHCs in the vicinity may be an effective outreach tool for persuading people to use clinics other than PP. In that case, you need all of them, good and bad, for comparison. If you need more of the CHCs in your area to do that with, see the US government’s CHC listings.
If health advocacy groups want to lobby the state legislature for improved CHCs, then sharing the information you have with them about specific ones that need improvement may be an excellent way of building relationships. Any legislative efforts to improve any CHC is helpful to strengthening CHCs as a nonviolent alternative to Planned Parenthood.
When the Problem is a PP Connection
Most commonly, those few CHCs who cooperate with PP might not be a PP alternative. However, there may be times when something can be done. For example, if they have staff training at PP, perhaps you can find another place for them to get the same training and ways to persuade them the alternative place is better. See our Frequently Asked Questions, Question #5 for more discussion on this point.