photo by: Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health

The Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health Board met Monday, Feb. 20, 2023.

Douglas County leaders will soon hear more about Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health’s transition away from serving as the county’s grant-holding provider for family-planning services.

Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health Director Dan Partridge told the health department’s board Monday night that he’s set to share an update about the topic with the Douglas County Commission next week. He’ll be joined by Heartland Community Health Center CEO Julie Branstrom. Heartland’s board of directors voted late last month to apply for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment grant for family-planning — or Title X — service providers.

If Heartland receives the Title X grant, it’ll take over for Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health. Title X services include contraceptive services, pregnancy testing, screenings for breast and cervical cancer and sexually transmitted infection testing and treatment.

Partridge asserted during Monday’s meeting that the health department’s clinic isn’t going away, there are just some pieces that are moving. And he said some Title X services may even end up still being on offer at the health department regardless of whether it has the grant or not. The health department will continue to provide those services as it has been until the next grant cycle begins July 1, regardless.

“There are still some things that I think we’re going to be doing, whether we do them through a Title X grant or not, especially in the short-term,” Partridge said. “And in part, that’s what I wanted to walk through with this grant. One thing that I think we should not lose track of is sexually transmitted infections, the treatment and diagnosis of.”

Next week’s commission meeting will be the second time Douglas County leaders will hear from Partridge about the change, and they had plenty of concerns when Partridge presented to them for the first time last month. Partridge said Monday the health department has compiled some data about trends in its clinic services as a follow-up to questions from county leaders.

That data includes patient numbers for the past three years for a variety of clinic services. It also includes a breakdown of the percentage of clinic services Title X accounted for in 2022 in staff hours and clinic expenditures — about 19% for each — and local tax support, which was a slightly lower ratio at 16%.

The health department also outsourced some focus groups intended to gather more information from the public about why they choose to get Title X services through their clinic, another question from commissioners. The health department tabbed Tara Gregory and Sarah Jolley with Wichita State University’s Community Engagement Institute to conduct those focus groups, and Gregory was on hand to present the results to the board Monday.

But the three focus groups conducted over the course of a day drew only 11 total participants, and Gregory said attendance very likely took a hit because of snowy weather in Lawrence the same day. It was unclear what specific date the focus groups took place on.

Nevertheless, Gregory said the entire group had received Title X services from the health department within the last year or so, and some said they’d been coming to the health department for its services for as long as 30 years.

She also said the group had “overwhelmingly” positive things to say about the cost, convenience and quality of Title X services through the health department clinic.

But the group didn’t seem to be aware of the recent decision to pass Title X services to Heartland. Gregory said focus group participants weren’t told on the day about the change, at least, and nobody expressed any worries about services not continuing.

Instead, participants seemed to be under the impression that they’d be able to stay put. In fact, one of their suggestions for the health department was to increase its promotion of Title X services to the community; the group expressed that maybe folks just weren’t aware those services were being offered at the health department in the first place.

“The sense I got is that they just really feel like ‘This is a place that I rely on, that I can continue to rely on it,'” Gregory said. “We didn’t hear anything that would indicate that there were any concerns about what programs might continue.”

In other business, the board voted to approve working with Scion Executive Search in its search for a new health department director, at the recommendation of the board’s director transition committee.

The head of that committee, Erika Dvorske, said the plan is to work with the firm to get a job posted and begin conducting preliminary interviews in April with hopes of having finalists selected by May. Partridge announced in November that he plans to retire in June.

Scion Executive Search has offices throughout the country and specializes in recruiting nonprofit leadership. It was the only firm the committee recommended Monday evening.