RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, the Guttmacher Institute reported that the United States has one of the highest unintended pregnancy rates in the industrialized world, with half of the six million unintended pregnancies occurring among women in the United States each year; and

WHEREAS, the federal government has identified family planning as the key to reducing unintended pregnancies by forty per cent by 2010; and

WHEREAS, Hawaii ranks last among the fifty states in public funding for services to help prevent unplanned pregnancies; and

WHEREAS, in 1995, Hawaii's family planning services system lost ninety per cent of its state family planning funds, equaling approximately $1,300,000; and

WHEREAS, in fiscal year 2005-2006, federal funds for family planning services totaled $1,700,000, and the required matching state funds amounted to only $170,000, resulting in a lack of adequate funding to community health centers offering family planning services; and

WHEREAS, in Hawaii, over twenty-seven thousand women or eleven per cent of the 254,000 women of childbearing age become pregnant each year; and

WHEREAS, in Hawaii, 138,110 women are in need of contraceptive services and supplies each year and of this number, 62,020 women of childbearing age need publicly supported contraceptive services because they have incomes below two hundred fifty per cent of the federal poverty level; and

WHEREAS, in Hawaii, forty publicly funded family planning clinics provide contraceptive care to seventeen thousand women of childbearing age yearly; and

WHEREAS, family planning clinics in Hawaii are currently able to serve only fifteen per cent of all women in need of publicly supported contraceptive services; now, therefore,

BE IT RESOLVED by the House of Representatives of the Twenty-third Legislature of the State of Hawaii, Regular Session of 2006, the Senate concurring, that the Department of Health is requested to convene a working group to determine family planning funding needs for legislative consideration in the State's 2007-2008 biennial budget; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Department of Health is requested to include, as members of the working group, representatives of the following:

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Department of Health is requested to convene the working group not later than sixty days after the adoption of this Concurrent Resolution; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the working group is requested to submit a final report, including findings, recommendations, and proposed legislation, if any, to the Governor and the Legislature not later than twenty days prior to the convening of the Regular Session of 2007; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that certified copies of this Concurrent Resolution be transmitted to the Director of Health; the Director of Human Services; the President of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists-Hawaii Chapter; the Chairperson of the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Women's Health at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, John A. Burns School of Medicine; the Hawaii's Women's Coalition; the Hawaii Women's Legislative Caucus, the Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies Coalition of Hawaii; and the Primary Care Association of Hawaii.

Report Title:

Family Planning Needs