Since the Mower County Board’s unanimous decision to discontinue the Family Planning Community Clinic program, nurses and staff are still providing care to their patients before time is up by Sept. 30.

Karissa Studier, head RN at the Family Planning Community Clinic program, shared that her team planned to continue providing services while the clinic makes the transition.

Although the program would no longer be holding monthly clinics, it will still continue to help patients with STI testing, resupplying of birth control for current clients and assisting individuals with applying for the MN Family Planning Program.

No staff members were lost in this transition, and are planned to be reassigned to different programs, Studier added.

“I feel that any time you lose a service provider, that can be tough for certain clients,” Studier said. “I hope in taking this transition time to work with them, and assist them to find clinics working on their needs.”

The program had been operating since 1997, servicing individuals who demographically were considered to be high-risk or from low-income backgrounds.

A number of factors led to the decision to discontinue the program, including: dwindling patients, the passage of the Affordable Care Act that allowed patients to seek treatment in traditional clinic settings, and the advancement of long-term contraceptives that didn’t exist in the ‘90s, Studier explained. There was also the lack of grant funding for the next two years that the program needed to keep operating.

Still, the program remains committed to servicing their clients until the end, even with transitioning them to other providers.

“There are other providers within our local and regional area that are able to care for, and we can transition our current clients to those clinics as well,” Studier said.

Despite acknowledging that the state overall had seen a decrease in teen pregnancies since 2010,  Mower County was still above state average for the number of teen birth rates from 27 teen births per 1,000 people — higher than the state average of 14 teen births per 1,000, according to the most recent statistics available — from 2014 to 2016. Community Health staff had distributed about 5,200 free condoms last year, which jumped to 6,400 free condoms this year.

Mower County had also ranked third in Minnesota for the highest rate of gonorrhea, following behind Hennepin and Ramsey counties. Despite this, the Family Planning Community Clinic saw a drastic drop in the number of patients when the clinic program’s peak hit 184 patients between 2008-2009, to only 37 patients in 2017.

Until time runs out, Studier stated that the clinic’s staff will continue to offer services and will look to continue other opportunities in the Family Planning Community Clinic’s place.

“We’re hoping to continue public health outreach and education,” she added. “We’ll be reaching out to patients in the next couple of weeks and let them know about this transition and where they’ll be able to access services,” she said. “We’ll continue to do STD testing here. They can walk in now and make an appointment. …we’re hoping to regroup at the end of the transition period once everything has been done.”