“Effective birth control means opportunity – it creates the chance for a young woman to finish her education, start her career, space out her children, and decide if and when she wants children. An unplanned pregnancy can really alter a young woman’s life and a young man’s life as well. Upstream has successfully partnered with us to create a zone of opportunity here in New York City.”
– Renee McConey, Director of Adolescent Health Services, The Door
Upstream USA provides system-wide training and technical assistance to health centers so they can offer their patients the full range of contraceptive methods, including the most effective ones, IUDs and implants.
One of the most powerful and unusual aspects of our work is that it is a one-time intervention that has lasting impact long after we’ve finished. So we’re often asked, But is your work sustainable? Do you see a decline in impact after you’ve finished your one-time intervention? The graph below shows that nearly two years after we started working with The Door – a nationally-recognized, youth-serving organization that provides educational services, counseling, job training and reproductive health services – young women are choosing the most effective methods of contraception in increasing numbers:
Training providers to place and remove IUDs and implants was just the start – we helped with workflow, billing and coding, and addressed other systems barriers, including stocking and training support staff members to provide contraceptive counseling. We see sustainable change because we work with every aspect of our health center clients to align systems to ensure they can offer their patients all methods of contraception with great, patient-centered counseling in a single visit.
Percentage of contraceptive patients choosing IUDs and implants
The Door continues to inspire our work every day. We are proud to share that inspiration with you via this short video chronicling our work together:
We’re also creating systems change all across Delaware. We’ve now trained more than 1,000 providers and support staff, and we’ll be looking hard at impact and sustainability as we continue to gather data from health centers and eventually aggregate data across the entire state. We’ll be sharing those lessons, including the impact of our work on the budgets of state agencies, in the months and years to come.
