Planned Parenthood provides a lot more care to their patients than just birth control. But what other services do they provide? Here to explain are the experts at Planned Parenthood of Nassau County.
Many people know Planned Parenthood for birth control. What else do women turn to Planned Parenthood for? We a provide the full range of sexual and reproductive healthcare including sexually transmitted infections testing, breast exams, abortion care, well-woman exams, human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination, prenatal care, and more. Planned Parenthood of Nassau County (PPNC) just added some important preventive healthcare services, including flu shots, diabetes screenings, and weight management.
Why is it important for Planned Parenthood to provide cancer screenings, flu shots, diabetes screenings, and other such services? For many patients, we are the only health care provider they see all year. Since we care about the overall wellbeing of every patient, we go above and beyond the normal spectrum of care.
What is a lesser-known service that Planned Parenthood offers? A lesser-known service is our HIV prevention, care and treatment program. PPNC was one of the highest achievers for identifying individuals newly diagnosed with HIV in 2018. We are also leading the way as one of only a few providers in Nassau to offer Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), a daily pill people at high risk of HIV can take to prevent HIV.
What kind of education and training programs does Planned Parenthood provide? Our bilingual sexuality educators facilitate age-appropriate, comprehensive workshops on topics including puberty, self-esteem, healthy relationships, birth control, abstinence, cancer prevention, and parent-child communication.
How is Planned Parenthood advocating for healthcare access? Our ability to provide free or low-cost services is largely the result of policies that support healthcare for all and so we advocate for those policies on behalf of the people we serve. For example, we fight to preserve the Affordable Care Act, which increases access to care for all and makes birth control affordable. We fight against the Trump Administration’s gag rule on Title X funding, because more than 12,000 of our patients would lose access to critical services at Planned Parenthood. We advocate for sex education across public schools in New York, because we see firsthand that education is the key to teens making safe and healthy choices. And, we also advocate against the harmful practices of fake clinics posing as “healthcare centers,” which are not medically trained, lack financial oversight, and coerce people facing unintended pregnancies into believing they only have one medical option.
