Planned Parenthood Shasta Pacific

Planned Parenthood Shasta Pacific (formerly Shasta-Diablo) champions healthy communities and increases access to quality health care, information and reproductive freedom by providing medical services, education and advocacy.

Why do we exist?

Planned Parenthood Shasta Pacific’s (PPSP’s) role as a health care safety provider for tens of thousands of low-income men and women continues to grow as more and more of our neighbors lose their jobs, homes and health coverage. PPSP focuses its efforts in three primary areas: providing high quality, low- to no-cost reproductive health care services; conducting comprehensive, medically accurate and age-appropriate sexuality education and outreach activities to women, men and teens; and empowering clients, staff, and others to inform policymakers about the real-life consequences of proposed and established health care policies.

Our 17 health centers offer a full breadth of reproductive health care services including, family planning and birth control, testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections, pregnancy testing and counseling, prenatal care, cancer screening, and providing safe, legal and accessible abortion care through competent and caring health care professionals among others.

What have you accomplished?

Last year, Planned Parenthood Shasta Pacific served more than 74,000 women, men and teens, through 161,000 visits, at our 17 full-service health centers and multiple satellite sites in the 17 counties we serve across Northern California.

Today as 7 million uninsured Californians seek medical care, PPSP’s system is being flooded with new clients. Requests for Planned Parenthood services were up significantly in some health centers. For example, our Redding health center saw a 25% increase in requests for health services in September 2010 from September 2009 and in our Pittsburg and San Ramon health centers, requests were up 17% and 11%, respectively. With the help of members of the community, we:

• Opened a new health center at the El Cerrito Plaza; • Tripled the size of our health center in Chico, and • Doubled the size of our health center in Vacaville and are expanding even further to help more people in need.

The need throughout Northern California is so great, the support is so strong, and our work has been so effective that we were invited to bring our expertise into 4 new counties! As of September 3, 2010 we expanded even further to provide Planned Parenthood services in San Francisco, Sonoma, Marin and Mendocino counties. To date:

• PPSP now provides services at the Good Samaritan Family Resource Center, in San Francisco;
• Our new Santa Rosa health center will open its doors towards the end of this month, and
• New Planned Parenthood health centers are scheduled to open in both San Francisco and Mill Valley soon after the New Year.

Planned Parenthood Shasta Pacific has one of the strongest and most extensive Community Services and Education programs in the country. In one year, we provided comprehensive, age appropriate, medically accurate sexuality education, youth development, and counseling services to 33,437 youth, teens, adults and parents. This year, PPSP won an Affiliate Excellence Award in the category “Special Efforts Serving Teens” for our satellite health care and education services on four high school campuses in the Vallejo City Unified School District and in West Contra Costs County.

Our public affairs program ensures that community leaders, public officials, and politicians understand the needs of our clients and the value of the services we provide. Through effective advocacy, we prevent additional restrictions to health care access and increase funding for reproductive health services.

“Planned Parenthood is very important to me and many other women of all ages because not only is it a network of support, it is a network of education and solutions. Without programs like this, the State of California would not be the same place as it is now. Every person should have someplace they can go regarding health reasons, especially if they are low income, students, etc. I am thankful for Planned Parenthood and the way it has helped me!
--PPSP Client

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