Hawai'i Makes Historic $6 Million Investment in Family Planning Services
HONOLULU, HI – Yesterday, the Hawai‘i’ State Senate and House budget committees approved a $6 million investment in family planning and preventive health services, allocated over a period of two years – consistent with Gov. Green’s proposed budget. This marks a significant and timely response to the harmful and abrupt withholding by U.S. HHS of Hawai‘i’s Title X federal family planning grant (currently $2.1 million annually) on March 31. As of April 1, family planning providers in Hawai‘i’ are no longer receiving critical federal resources to support their delivery of care.
“This historic state investment in family planning will protect and restore access to essential health services across the islands, especially for communities who face the greatest barriers to care,” said Amy Moy, Co-CEO of Essential Access Health. “We applaud the Hawai‘i legislature, Vice Speaker Ichiyama, the Senate Ways and Means members, House Finance members, and Governor Green for stepping up at this vital moment to demonstrate much-needed leadership to protect Hawai‘i’s health care infrastructure and family planning safety net. Essential Access Health is honored to be Hawai‘i’s Title X grantee, supporting the delivery of time-sensitive, life-changing, and sometimes life-saving health services at 30 health centers, and we look forward to working with our elected leaders and the administration to ensure access is not only protected, but expanded, across the islands.”
Hawai‘i was without federal funding for family planning services from 2019-2022. At that time, the state stepped in to replace a portion of the lost federal funding, but family planning infrastructure was lost and services were cut. Essential Access Health reintroduced the Title X program to Hawai‘i in collaboration with a diverse network of providers and community partners in 2022, but even with Title X funds, there continue to be substantial unmet needs for equitable, affordable, and confidential reproductive health services.
Title X primarily serves people with low incomes, providing a pathway to essential and time-sensitive health care like birth control, STI prevention, testing, and treatment, pregnancy testing and options counseling, lifesaving cancer screenings, and other preventive care. Hawai‘i’s Title X network consists of federally qualified health centers, Native Hawaiian Health Centers, rural health centers, the University of Hawai‘i, and Planned Parenthood that deliver services on Kauaʻi, Oʻahu, Lanai, Maui, and Hawaiʻi Island, and served approximately 13,000 patients in 2024 (though the total is likely an undercount due to implementation of a new data collection system). Forty percent of patients served by Title X last year identify as Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, and nearly half are teenagers and young adults.
The budget will now be up for a final reading in both houses of the legislature before heading to the Governor's desk for signature.
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Essential Access Health advances reproductive equity and champions quality sexual and reproductive health care for all through distributing public funding, policy advocacy, research, training and capacity building for the health care workforce, and youth and community empowerment. We work to ensure that everyone, everywhere can get the care they want and need, where and how they need it, with dignity and respect.