Women's Health

Family Planning: An Investment In Our Future

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Georgia Family Planning Program?
The Georgia Family Planning Program (GFPP) offers health education, health care and family planning to help women and men stay healthy and have healthy babies. These services strengthen families and communities throughout Georgia by promoting personal responsibility and economic self-sufficiency.

GFPP includes nonprofit agencies and local health departments in every Georgia county, who work together to make affordable family planning available to all Georgians.

The program’s direct family planning services are supported by Title X Federal funding and state funds. GFPP is directed by the Georgia Department of Public Health.

How does the Georgia Family Planning Program benefit Georgia?
GFPP provides the only source of primary care for many low income women and men. This helps reduce medical costs to the state.

• Services include general medical examinations; blood pressure checks; blood and urine tests; immunizations for adults and children; and screening for cancer and sexually transmitted diseases.
• The program also educates patients about disease prevention; abstinence, adoption awareness, violence and sexual abuse, tobacco cessation; drug and alcohol abuse; immunization; sexually transmitted diseases; nutrition; and health before pregnancy.

GFPP helps families take responsibility for their future and the future of their children, which promotes healthy families and communities.

• Family planning staff counsel people about abstinence and methods to postpone pregnancy, including natural family planning and contraception methods and devices.
• By planning the births of their children, women and men are more likely to be self-sufficient and able to provide a loving, nurturing and stable home for their children.
• Abortions are not offered or provided.
• Family planning staff provides adoption awareness counseling.

Teenage child rearing can lead to a lifetime of social, educational and financial disadvantages for mothers and children.

• GFPP helps reduce teen pregnancies.
• Georgia has one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates in the country.
• A teenage mother is less likely to be married or to complete her education and job training, and more likely to be on welfare.

GFPP saves tax dollars.

• For every dollar spent on family planning services, $4.40 is saved on medical care, welfare, and nutritional programs for babies up to age two. In Georgia, this could mean almost $16 million saved over a two-year period.
• A woman with an unwanted pregnancy is less likely to get prenatal care, and her baby is more likely to be born dangerously underweight. Underweight babies often require expensive hospital care ($30,000 per month), and are more likely to have a lifelong disability which could require costly interventions over a lifetime.

What is Title X?
Title X of the Public Health Service Act was first authorized in 1970 and serves as the backbone of family planning services for many women in the United States. Federal monies are provided directly to state and local family planning providers, and ten percent state matching funds are required. It authorizes project grants to public and private nonprofit organizations to ensure access for all who need and want family planning services, but with a priority given to those living on low incomes. The program also has a training program for clinic personnel and community-based education.

What if there was no Title X federal funding for family planning?

• Georgia would lose $8.5 million in federal funding.
• There would be an estimated 35,000 unplanned pregnancies annually by women who now use the GFPP.
• About 144,000 Georgians, including approximately 139,000 women, would not have received comprehensive health care and family planning services last year. Of these, 98 percent are working poor or unemployed; most have no health insurance.
• Lack of access to family planning services puts low-income women at more risk of unintended pregnancy. For some low-income families, the cost of supporting an additional child can make the difference between economic self-sufficiency and dependency on government subsidies.
• Georgia’s welfare reform requires access to family planning services and education. Without Title X federal funding, state funds would have to cover the entire cost of family planning services.

GFPP is an investment in our future.
Strong, independent families make strong communities. Health care and family planning helps people take care of themselves and their children. The Georgia Family Planning Program encourages personal responsibility and provides health care to children and adults.

For more information on the GFPP services in your community, contact your local health department or call Powerline at 1-800-822-2539 or 770-451-5501.