Los Angeles County’s Martin Luther King Jr. Medical Center provided a hormonal birth control implant to a foster youth in its care for the first time last week, part of a new program to offer free long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs) to young women and girls, some as young as 12, who are in or at risk of entering foster care.
Started in 2014 by the director of a clinic for pregnant and parenting teens at the Los Angeles County-University of Southern California Medical Center (LAC-USC), a program to provide LARCs to foster youth is being expanded to include the other six medical hubs affiliated with the county‘s Department of Health Services.
The so-called LARCs include Nexplanon, an implant placed inside the upper arm that delays pregnancy for three years, and two different IUD options that last five and 10 years, respectively.
[For more of this story go to https://chronicleofsocialchang...en-foster-care/13071]
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