Offering Family Planning at the Work Site

Abstract

The past 10 years may be thought of as the development decade of organized family planning services in the U.S. with infusions of public funds and supportive legislation stimulating the involvement of a network of some 3000 public and private agencies in provisions of services to low-income women. The Planned Parenthood Federation of America designed a pilot project in mid-1973 to evaluate the potential of family planning clinics in industrial settings. Clinics were initiated at the Newark Home office of the Mutual Benefit Life Insurance Company and at the Hoffman-La Roche pharmaceutical company in Nutley New Jersey. The objectives were to discover: whether women employees would utilize a personal service such as a family planning at their places of employment; whether such clinics are cost-effective; and whether the clinics would provide women with an opportunity to initiate contraception or to upgrade their method. The findings of these experiments showed that the viability of a work site family planning clinic depend on: the age of female employees and their ability to obtain alternative family planning care; employees access to private physician care; wage levels and insurance coverage. The work site family planning clinic is helped by: existing medical facilities at a work site; managements cooperation; permission for inhouse publicity prior to the clinic opening and uring the early months of operation (the content of communications should focus on information rather than motivation); and along with contraception the associated health care aspects of the clinic should be stressed with emphasis on Pap smears breast examinations VD tests and medical referrals. To meet the family planning needs of employees there are also used: 1) the companys medical and support staff; 2) the family planning clinic at a site convenient to employees of a number of firms; 3) meetings of Planned Parenthood representatives with workers in various industries to discuss health issues (in 1974 Planned Parenthood of Essex County met with workers of various industries in Greater Newark area).