A major barrier for sexual and reproductive health? Cost. Innovation can help

According to the World Health Organization, one of the greatest barriers to accessing health care for many people in the United States is cost.

This includes sexual and reproductive health care, and as state abortion bans continue to proliferate across the country and force many people to travel long distances for care, the cost of this care is skyrocketing.

One in four women in the U.S. will have an abortion by age 45.

A study by the Guttmacher Institute that surveyed over 1000 abortion patients at 11 different providers in the U.S. found that 63 per cent of women who delayed their abortion care cited cost as the reason. 

Too many people, especially people who already face barriers to getting care because of systemic discrimination, are forced to delay or go without the care or medication they need due to concerns about cost.

If we’re not making care more affordable, we’re not expanding access.

After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s innovation team jumped swiftly into action.

Our first step was to hear directly from people seeking abortion care to understand their emerging needs in real-time better and allow their firsthand experiences to guide our approach to creating digital solutions.

Through surveys and in-depth conversations with people from different backgrounds and regions across the U.S., we found that among the many increasingly complex obstacles people face when seeking abortion care, cost is almost always a primary concern.

It was clear that making abortion care affordable needed to be a top priority. 

Planned Parenthood Federation of America partnered with Reprocare’s Piggybank platform, a software that allows patients in need of financial support to be matched with available abortion funds — anonymously and within minutes.

In a hugely successful three-month pilot, 115 Planned Parenthood health center patients matched with over $62K in abortion funds, and the automated process helped reduce the time spent on logistics by 45 per cent.

Piggybank is a simple solution that tackles efficiency and health inequity in reproductive care by helping ensure no abortion funds are left on the table, and most importantly, that people can get the care they need. 

Investing in digital solutions reflects our belief that technology and innovation can and should be leveraged to expand access to sexual and reproductive health care and information — even, and perhaps especially, when public policy makes it harder for patients to get the care they need.