U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: Family Planning Services Grants

Family Planning Services Grants provide financial support to organizations to establish and operate voluntary family planning projects, which includes family planning services for both men and women as they plan their families. Such services include postponing, preventing, achieving, or facilitating the spacing of pregnancy. Family planning services also include infertility services; health screenings and exams; lab tests and related health services; information, education, and counseling related to family planning; and referral services. An applicant may propose a family planning service project that either is comprised of a single provider or a group of partnering providers who deliver coordinated and comprehensive family planning services.

Projects should offer core family planning services that include:

• A sexual health assessment which ascertains current risk in light of sexual history and current behavioral practices.
• Introduction and access to tools for a personal family planning, fertility, and reproductive life plan, which informs decision-making.
• Family planning services which offer a broad range of acceptable and effective family planning methods and services (including natural family planning methods – also called fertility awareness), and which includes pregnancy testing and counseling.
• Health screenings which are preventive and/or diagnostic in nature and which help clients achieve preconception health; offering at least STD screenings and treatment and cervical and breast cancer screenings; and may also include other services including, but not limited to preventive health, mental health assessments, and risk behavior screenings.
• Health information, education, and counseling with an optimal health outcome as the desired goal for the client.
• Optimal health refers to the best possible outcomes for an individual’s physical, emotional, and social health.
• Referral services available to clients from a network of formalized linkages among community partners.

Program priorities are as follows:

• Assuring high quality family planning and related health services that will improve the overall health of individuals, couples, and families, with priority for services to those of low-income families, offering, at a minimum, core family planning services mentioned above.
• Assuring activities that promote positive family relationships for the purpose of increasing family participation in family planning and healthy decision-making; education and counseling that prioritize optimal health and life outcomes for every individual and couple; and other related health services.
• Ensuring that all clients are provided services in a voluntary, client-centered and non-coercive manner.
• Promoting provision of comprehensive primary health care services to make it easier for individuals to receive both primary health care and family planning services preferably in the same location, or through nearby referral providers, and increase incentive for those individuals in need of care choosing a Title X provider.
• Assuring compliance with state laws requiring notification or the reporting of child abuse, child molestation, sexual abuse, rape, incest, intimate partner violence, and human trafficking.
• Encouraging participation of families, parents, and/or legal guardians in the decision of minors to seek family planning services; and providing counseling to minors on how to resist attempts to coerce minors into engaging in sexual activities.
• Demonstrating that Title X activities are separate and clearly distinct from non-Title X activities, ensuring that abortion is not a method of family planning for this grant.
• Using U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Population Affairs (OPA) performance metrics to regularly perform quality assurance and quality improvement activities.

Amount: A total of $260,000,000 is available to make up to 100 awards that range from $150,000-$22,000,000 per budget period. The budget period is 9-12 months and the project period is up to three years. The total available in New Mexico is $3,304,000.

Eligibility: Public and private nonprofit entities, including comprehensive primary care providers, hospitals, health collaboratives, and women’s health centers. Faith-based organizations and American Indian/Alaska Native/Native American (AI/AN/NA) organizations are eligible to apply for Title X family planning services grants. There is not a fixed cost-sharing percentage or amount, but projects must include financial support from sources other than Title X.

Link: https://www.grants.gov/web/grants/view-opportunity.html?oppId=297943

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