Shake Up In Local Health Care Service Delivery | Planned Parenthood takes over Central Mass. Title X grant
For 33 years, Health Awareness Services of Central Massachusetts Inc., a Marlborough-based nonprofit with about 50 employees, offered family planning support, including contraception, education and health services to people around Central Massachusetts with the help of a federal grant.
Now Health Awareness Services is no more. Filling the gap in administering the federal grant is a group with a significantly higher profile, Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts.
Dianne Luby, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Massachusetts, said the new responsibilities are an extension of work the group was already doing in Central Massachusetts. Planned Parenthood has operated in Worcester since 1982. Luby said this is the first time the Massachusetts branch has provided services through the federal grant program known as Title X, but the parent organization has done so in many other states.
“Title X is a huge grant for Planned Parenthood nationally, but we just had never done this [here], mainly because other providers were doing it,” she said.
Michael J. Mazloff, the former executive director of Health Awareness, said the stage was set for a transition a couple of years ago, when the organization decided its relatively small $2 million budget made it difficult to provide health-care services effectively. The group decided to merge its HIV and community education services into JRI Health, a division of Boston-based Justice Resource Institute. With that merger, he said, it became “untenable” to keep providing the federally funded family planning services.
The Title X grant provides about $750,000 a year to serve Worcester County and much of MetroWest. Health Awareness, which, according to its financial filings, got 35 percent of its funding from the grant, subcontracted the services to some other local organizations like Montachusett Oppor-tunity Council (MOC) in Fitchburg and Framingham Community Health Center.
When Health Awareness decided to stop administering the grant itself, Mazloff said, it went to Beverly-based Health Quarters in the hopes of merging the family planning services. Health Quarters, which declined to comment for this story, applied for the Title X grant but was beaten out by Planned Parenthood.
Although the grant award the organization received is only for two years, Luby said it is preparing for the long haul, setting up new locations in Milford, Marlborough and Fitchburg. Planned Parenthood paid for the clinics from its own money, she said, since the grant funds are just for services.
Like Health Awareness, Planned Parenthood is subcontracting with other organizations to provide services, including Great Brook Valley Health Center in Framingham and possibly Harrington Hospital in Southbridge. In Fitchburg, where the new Planned Parenthood clinic has been the subject of controversy, Luby said the services are temporarily continuing through MOC to smooth the transition.
Although the organization does not provide abortions at any of its three new locations, Luby acknowledged that all some people know about Planned Parenthood is that it offers abortions in some of its clinics.
But Luby said the solution to controversy is more openness.
“We want to involve parents, we want to involve health-care providers,” she said.
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