Portland, OR – Planned Parenthood Columbia Willamette’s (PPCW) Salmon Creek health center in Vancouver, Washington reopened today to meet the demand for affordable reproductive health care in Clark County. The health center will be open Monday through Friday each week, seeing patients for a variety of reproductive health care needs.
“Over the past several months, our Vancouver health center has seen an increasing number of patients,” said Saskia de Boer, PPCW Board Chair. “By reopening the Salmon Creek health center, we hope to get southwest Washington patients in for appointments more quickly and make it easier for residents to acquire basic health services.”
Services offered at Planned Parenthood’s Salmon Creek health center include:
• A full range of birth control options
• Free pregnancy testing
• Emergency contraception
• Annual gynecological exams and Pap tests
• Sexually transmitted disease testing and treatment
• Health education, including breast self-exam and testicular self-exam instruction
• Referrals for prenatal care, parenting, adoption, abortion, and sterilization
More than 17,000 low-income women in Clark County are still in need of affordable contraceptive services like those available at Planned Parenthood, according to a February 2009 report from the Guttmacher Institute. The reopening of PPCW’s Salmon Creek health center will greatly increase contraceptive access for women in Clark County.
For more information on PPCW, visit www.ppcw.org.
Planned Parenthood Columbia Willamette (PPCW) is the largest non-profit family planning and reproductive rights organization in Oregon and Southwest Washington. Since 1963, PPCW has successfully carried out its mission of providing, promoting and protecting access to quality reproductive and sexual health care. Each year, approximately 60,000 women, men and teens visit one of PPCW’s eleven health centers. We provide a wide range of education programs and health care services, including low-cost contraceptives, emergency contraception, annual gynecological check-ups, breast exams, cervical cancer detection and treatment, testing and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases, and pregnancy testing and options counseling. Approximately five percent of PPCW’s services are for first term abortion care. For more information, visit www.ppcw.org.
