As we look ahead to closing out another year, we are taking stock of our impact to date and the scale at which Upstream is now operating:
- In 2021 alone, we secured 12 new agency partners that serve approximately 105,000 women of reproductive age annually.
- Heading into 2022, Upstream is now positioned to deliver our program to health centers that serve nearly 800,000 women of reproductive age every year — more than 75 percent of our way to our goal of reaching a million women by 2024.
This means there are nearly 800,000 patients who are now regularly asked if they want to become pregnant in the next year as a standard screening question. These patients are now experiencing non-coercive, patient-centered counseling, and are fully empowered to choose when and if they want to become pregnant.
Despite the changing context amidst the pandemic, we continue to see increasing demand from health centers that are ready, willing and able to partner with us and prioritize best-in-class contraceptive care. Each health center we work with is committed to sharing data, setting aside time for training and technical assistance, and ensuring sustainability for years after their active Upstream partnership ends.
As we look ahead to 2022, we are particularly excited to launch our work with two new partners that reach a significant number of patients each year:
- Coastal Medical in Rhode Island serves 24,550 women of reproductive age annually across 20 sites, including pediatric care sites that aim to increase contraceptive care for their adolescent patients.
- University of Washington Neighborhood Clinics in Washington state reaches almost 35,000 women of reproductive age annually across 17 primary care clinics. UWNC chose to partner with Upstream now because of our commitment to patient-centered contraceptive care, which aligns with their focus on health equity.
These partnerships — and the 10 others we’ve already secured this past year — demonstrate a deep commitment on the part of many health care providers to increasing access to contraceptive care.
Through these partnerships and others that we’re initiating or re-starting in 2022, we are confident about Upstream’s ability to shift the landscape for hundreds of thousands of patients across the country who currently experience a multitude of barriers when it comes to their contraceptive health.
Upstream’s continued, rapid growth — even in this otherwise challenging year — demonstrates the commitment of our partners across the country to Upstream’s mission: by reducing unplanned pregnancy, we can empower millions of patients to achieve their own goals of becoming pregnant only if and when they want to.
