family planning Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Balancing Public Health Needs In The Age Of Coronavirus

The coronavirus pandemic continues to be the top public health concern in the nation.

The West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources reported early Thursday morning 12 new cases, bringing the total positive case count in West Virginia to 51.

But what about other public health needs?

“We can’t forget about treatment of everything else, because most of what people are going to die from is not the coronavirus, it’s other problems,” said Dr. Terrence Reidy, health officer for the Berkeley-Morgan County Health Department and the Jefferson County Health Department in the Eastern Panhandle. “Whether it’s heart attacks or appendicitis or regular old pneumonia.”

But balancing responding to the coronavirus and addressing ongoing public health needs such as family planning or the opioid epidemic will be a challenge, Reidy said.

“Most of my conversations on this matter have been recognizing that this coronavirus is going to outstrip all other phone calls and all other requests for services. So, many of our basic things are being put on hold,” he said. “We’re having to prioritize by what things can’t wait.”

Things like certain vaccinations or elective surgeries.

But he said things like emergency care, STD treatments or family planning needs still have to be prioritized.

However, the state’s rural geography may play a pivotal role in helping stop the spread of coronavirus.

“People are not as clustered [here],” he said. “So there are people who are able to pretty much stay away from crowds.”

But he also noted our hospitals, several of which have closed in recent years, may not be ready for a swarm of coronavirus cases.

“It’s hard in a rural area to have experts in some medical areas nearby. Recognizing the problems could be difficult.”

Reidy said the best thing to do is to treat everyone with respect, be patient, stay calm and stay home.

“We need to be civil and forgiving of each other. Not the blame game of why wasn’t this done and why wasn’t this done. Just look around; the whole world is suffering from this. So we need to treat each other properly.”

Keep up with West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s latest coronavirus coverage here.

Bill Seeks to Reduce Unplanned Pregnancies by Making Birth Control More Accessible

Birth control has been covered by insurance since the Affordable Care Act took effect, but states like West Virginia still have high numbers of unintended pregnancies. So in the 2019 legislative session, West Virginia lawmakers passed a bill that will allow pharmacists to distribute birth control without a prescription from a doctor’s office.

The idea behind the legislation was simple – reduce the barriers to birth control and the number of unintended pregnancies might fall.

“Access to providers is something that limits some people to get birth control options and making it available to pharmacies in cases of low risk was something we wanted to do,” said delegate Joe Ellington, one of the bill’s sponsors. Under the new legislation, pharmacists can prescribe birth control to low-risk patients – screened with a questionnaire – for up to a year.

“And then the requirement we had in there was within a year’s time, they wouldn’t be able to get another refill until they’d gotten in with a provider,” Ellington said.

West Virginia is not the first state to pass such legislation. Pharmacists can prescribe birth control to low-risk patients in California, New Mexico and Tennessee, among a handful of others. Some states like California don’t have age restrictions for who can get over-the-counter birth control. In other states, like Colorado and West Virginia, you have to be 18 or older.

West Virginia has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the country, but Ellington said there were concerns in committee about prescribing birth control to minors without either parental consent or seeing that patient in a clinic.

“My concern was if you have a 13-year-old who is getting birth control pills, are there some other problems going on? Is this kid being bullied, being abused, why do they need them at that time?”

But, Ellington said, if the program is successful, legislators may consider revisiting the age limit for older teens.

Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, with support from Marshall Health and Charleston Area Medical Center.

Us & Them: The Talk

Despite all the fuss about sex education in America, students get precious little of it. Jonathan Zimmerman, an education historian, tells Trey how Americans spend more time arguing about what kids should learn about human sexuality in schools than they actually do teaching anything about it.