About Us
The California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS), Office of Family Planning (OFP) is entrusted by the California Legislature “to make available to citizens of the State who are of childbearing age comprehensive medical knowledge, assistance, and services relating to the planning of families.”
The Family Planning, Access, Care, and Treatment (Family PACT) Program is administered by DHCS’s OFP. Operating since 1997, Family PACT is a comprehensive family planning services program that provides contraceptive and family planning-related services, together with client-centered health education and counseling, at no cost to California’s low-income (under 200% of the federal poverty level) residents of reproductive age.
Family PACT is designed primarily to assist individuals with a medical necessity for family planning services. For purposes of Family PACT client eligibility determination, medical necessity for family planning services means the ability to become pregnant or cause a pregnancy. The overall goal of the Family PACT Program is to ensure that low-income Californians have access to health information, counseling, and comprehensive family planning services to reduce the likelihood of unintended pregnancy and to maintain optimal reproductive health.
The intent of the program is to provide eligible California women and men access to comprehensive family planning services in order to:
- Establish the number, timing, and spacing of their children
- Maintain optimal reproductive health
OFP is responsible for program policy, program monitoring, quality improvement, and program evaluation. Additionally, OFP provides Medi-Cal/Family PACT providers with clinical resources such as webinars, clinical practice alerts, online training courses, provider orientations, and in-person comprehensive intrauterine device (IUD) and implant insertion trainings. These resources and trainings reflect and promote the latest program policy guidelines, up-to-date evidence-based clinical recommendations, and highest-quality standards of family planning and reproductive health care.