And while Idaho, as a border state, is sending a lot of patients to Oregon, Handler and Kennedy say Oregon clinics are seeing patients from all over the country to get abortions. “We see patients from Florida and Texas and the majority of states around that have bans,” Kennedy says. “What usually happens is that maybe a patient in Florida is looking for somewhere to get care and they try to go to New York, but New York doesn’t have capacity. And then they call Colorado, and Colorado is already at capacity. So ultimately things start to spill over. We are seeing patients from everywhere.” Kennedy adds that if a state on the East Coast “goes dark” in terms of abortion access, “It’s all impactful … it absolutely impacts Oregon.” “With SB 8, which was the Texas law that passed in the fall of ’21, it only took 10 days for the first patient to show up from Texas in Medford,” Handler says. “They drove up with three kids in the back. I mean, they were like, ‘You were the next available and we just need to get here.’ It only took maybe six weeks after Dobbs for us to see patients in the state of Oregon from every single state with an abortion ban.” Kennedy says she is hoping to increase capacity for services other than abortion in Ontario, in part because rates of sexually transmitted diseases — like syphilis — are spiraling upward in Oregon. According to Planned Parenthood spokesperson Kristi Scdoris, rates of syphilis in Oregon doubled from 2020 to 2022. Twenty- six counties reported a syphilis case in a pregnant person, and 19 counties reported a case of congenital syphilis — that is, babies born with syphilis because they were born to an infected person. Those numbers make Oregon 10th in the nation for rates of early syphilis and 16th for congenital syphilis. Scdoris also notes that STI testing is the most frequently requested appointment at PPCW health centers, and that rural counties are seeing the largest increase in syphilis overall. “Amy and I feel like this is a classic example of a public health problem that shouldn’t exist, that disproportionately affects low- income folks and people of color, that we could do something about,” Kennedy says. “We can own this space and actually really work with state public health departments to move the needle on STIs.” According to the Oregon Health Authority, most Oregon counties east of the Cascades have just one clinic that provides reproductive health services. A couple of counties — Wheeler and Sherman — don’t have any. That means rural Oregonians seeking abortions face a long drive — but so do many patients seeking other reproductive health services. “What we’re really focused on now is how do we not only expand our care beyond abortion care, which is really important — and of course, which we need to do and we will always do. How do we really, actually expand that to all the other public health that we do, that patients need, that our Eastern, rural communities need and that our neighbors need from Idaho?” Kennedy says. One goal is to hire another clinician in Ontario, which is seeing between 600 and 800 patients per year and enable the clinic to roughly double the number of patients it can see per year and expand the services it provides. And then, Kennedy says, “we’ll reassess what the community needs.” In addition to her medical degree, Kennedy holds a master’s degree in public health — and so does Handler. “I don’t know this for sure, but I think Oregon might be the only state that has two Planned Parenthood CEOs with public health backgrounds,” Kennedy says. “I really came to this work — I came to medicine initially, but then came to leading health care organizations with the very deep belief that when you have options and choice, and when you are creating healthy pregnancies, when you’re allowing people to choose when and if they become pregnant, or when and if they stay pregnant, that that really empowers the community to be healthier,” Kennedy says. Before she went to graduate school, Handler worked in politics in Wisconsin — and worked with Planned Parenthood lobbyists on the Healthy Youth Act, a bill that required all public schools to teach comprehensive sex education. That bill was repealed in 2012 but reintroduced this legislative session. Handler notes that similar bills have been introduced in states across the country, including Oregon. “I really got the spark for focusing on sexual reproductive health and seeing that it’s the key to everything. It’s the key to every- “Amy and I feel like [syphilis] is a classic example of a public health problem that shouldn’t exist … that we could do something about.” DR. SARA KENNEDY, CEO OF PLANNED PARENTHOOD COLUMBIA WILLAMETTE Planned Parenthood Columbia Willamette’s Northeast Portland headquarters 38
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