It's about to get easier for low- income residents of Patterson, Newman, Oakdale and Waterford to seek reproductive health care.

Hoping to help Medi-Cal recipients in these areas hook up with services such as birth control counseling and gynecological exams, Stanislaus County supervisors this week moved $204,000 from one county agency to another.

The money, transferred from the Community Services Agency to the Health Services Agency, will pay for presentations on family planning to men and women enrolled in welfare-to- work and other county programs. Also in the works: 40 hours of nurse practitioner time to help manage patient loads at medical offices.

The idea is to let residents know about reproductive health services offered in their communities and cut down on waiting time for appointments. The effort will begin next month.

"The whole point is creating more access to care in these areas," said Samantha Phillips- Bland, family planning director for the Health Services Agency.

The plan stemmed from a state Department of Health Services study, which found only half of Medi-Cal recipients in Stanislaus County sought family planning services in the past year.

That's not enough, according to federal officials, who with welfare reform charged states with decreasing the pregnancy rate among unmarried Medi-Cal recipients. Medi-Cal is the state health insurance program for low-income and disabled people.

Newman, Patterson, Oakdale and Waterford were singled out in part because of a 1997 study by the University of California at Berkeley that found high birth rates among teen-agers there.

Waterford and Oakdale rank in the 95th percentile in the study, meaning they have among the highest teen pregnancy rates in the state. Patterson and Newman rank in the 90th percentile.

Teen parents often don't finish high school and rarely go to college, said Gerry Caviness, assistant director of Stanislaus County Community Services Agency.

This makes it tough for these teens to find good jobs, she said, and it's likely they'll end up on public assistance. More than 50 percent of families who receive welfare benefits in Stanislaus County are headed by parents who don't have high school diplomas, Caviness said.

Stanislaus County officials hope getting the word out about reproductive health care services curbs the trend. They hope to help people learn about several topics, including self-breast and testicular exams, contraception and natural family planning.

Starging next month, they'll speak to those enrolled in welfare-to-work and Women, Infant and Children programs. They'll distribute fliers in assistance checks. They'll send community health workers to the targeted areas with printed information telling residents how to get reproductive health services.

Also as a part of the program, agency workers will work with churches and schools to let officials there know what services are available.

Doctors and nurses say the public-relations campaign could help. They're also excited about the nurse practitioner the transfer of funds will provide.

At Golden Valley Health Center in Patterson, Dr. John Francis said patients sometimes wait up to a month for appointments.

He said he'd welcome county funds to pay a nurse practitioner to work more hours. That, he said, would help more patients to be seen in a timely manner.

Across town at the Sutter- Gould clinic, patients don't wait as long for appointments. But office manager Lena Reza wonders if patients know the facility offers gynecological exams and other family planning services.

Oakdale patients also may be confused. Health Services Agency officials aren't sure if patients know the agency's Oakdale clinic -- called a prenatal clinic -- offers other services.

"Patients can go there for reproductive health care too," said Phillips-Bland, the family planning director. "They might not realize that."

Reprinted by permission of Modesto Bee.