Access to Family Planning Services in the Era of Welfare Reform – Impact of the California Program

Diana L. Greene, University of California, San Francisco
Julia Bley, University of California, San Francisco
John Mikanda, California Department of Health Services
Philip Darney, University of California, San Francisco
Felicia Stewart, University of California, San Francisco

This paper examines access to publicly funded family planning services in California during and after the implementation of welfare reform. As Medi-Cal rolls declined in response to the 1996 Personal Work and Responsibility Act, there were dramatic increases in enrollment in a state-funded program that provided family planning services to low-income women and men who have no coverage for these services. The California family planning program, the Family Planning, Access, Care and Treatment (Family PACT) Program, now serves over 1.25 million per year. This paper presents new estimates based on recent data from the 2000 census and California-specific information on the risk of an unintended pregnancy from the California Women’s Health Survey to characterize the population in need of publicly funded services. We examine unmet need for contraceptive services by ethnic group, age and county in an era of changing family planning service availability for low-income women in California.