Bucky, I try to give credit when it's due. FQHCs are note worthy.
"The Federally Qualified Health Centers" are an alternative for indigent to low income women and men. "Comprehensive Care Clinics" are more prevalent in rural areas than urban areas, but they do exist.
In Austin, while several FQHC's exists - current there's only one "Community Women's Healthcare Center". Austin isn't a small city. Plus there's about a 150k students. Actually more. Universities and colleges in the area have only have "minor healthcare" facilities.
But a few other FQHCs do provide services including various screening tests, birth control, etc. By the way, these FQHCs do offer sliding scale payments for those in lower middle income folks.
When the Texas Legislature forced the closing of so many Texas PPs, including several in Austin. There are 3 PPs . Two of which closed, but have recently reopened. Only 1 of the 3 provided abortions.
Overall , Austin doesn't have enough facilities to serve to the population of qualifying women who need women's health & reproductive services.
And if you don't know, Texas rejected The Medicaid Expansion Program, which also created a lack of resources for indigent to low income women.
Travis County is the Auspice for the oversight and fund management. It's up the the County to seek more more funding. The crazy thing is that Secretary of the Dept. of Health and Human Services has to declare a lack of services for a given population. And the red tape goes on.
Texas needs to be way more proactive in women's health, but more in particular women's reproductive health care.
Read more in the July 2017 article below:
https://www.guttmacher.org/article/...nues-undercut-access-reproductive-health-care
To Find FQHC location across the country go to:
https://findahealthcenter.hrsa.gov/index.html#
Then plug in a zip code in the search bar.
Good suggestion, Bucky.
