CLAREMONT — Community members and local health programs said the impending closure of the Planned Parenthood health center in Claremont on Thursday will be a loss to the area, leaving lingering questions about whether all people’s health needs will be met.

The Claremont Planned Parenthood center, which served 783 patients in 2021, is among five Planned Parenthood clinics, along with four in Vermont, scheduled to close in less than two weeks, according to Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, a regional arm of the national sexual and reproductive health organization.

The announcement, issued May 13, gave communities less than a month’s notice, leaving many health providers a narrow window to adapt.

“It happened so quickly,” said Karen Jameson, a registered nurse for TLC Family Resource Center in Claremont. “And now we are trying to figure it out. I know we eventually will, but it will take some time to get things sorted.”

TLC, a nonprofit that provides health-based support for children and families in lower Grafton and Sullivan counties, has had a long-running partnership with Planned Parenthood, which assisted TLC clients with an array of services including contraception, testing for sexually transmitted diseases, abortion referrals and health screenings.

While most health services provided by Planned Parenthood are similarly available at other area health providers, transitioning to these centers may pose challenges to patients needing immediate assistance, Jameson said.

For example, some TLC clients use birth control injections as a contraceptive, which must be repeated every three months with a window of only a couple of days for each injection, according to Jameson. While Planned Parenthood would typically assist those patients as immediately as possible, other health facilities may require a regular appointment, which can take weeks.

“Now we will have to be much more proactive and stay on top of things, to make sure that people don’t wait until the last minute to (take care of their health needs),” Jameson said.

Jameson also said she is researching whether other health facilities will be willing to provide birth control to adolescents ages 14-17 without a parent’s consent, which New Hampshire law allows. Planned Parenthood provides these services currently, but other health providers may not feel comfortable, Jameson said.

Residents and elected officials worry the loss of the Planned Parenthood center will have the greatest adverse impact on low-income families who lack resources or the flexibility in their schedules to travel to other health providers.

Claremont’s Planned Parenthood was located downtown and was walkable for residents living in the city center, many of whom do not have vehicles, noted New Hampshire Sen. Sue Prentiss, D-District 5. The next closest Planned Parenthood clinic to Claremont is in White River Junction, which is 25 miles away and would require taking two community buses to reach.

In addition, many residents in Claremont and the surrounding area do not have internet access necessary to easily use telehealth services, whether because of affordability or a lack of service where they live.

“So if they don’t have a vehicle to travel, or if telehealth isn’t available, where are they going to go?” Prentiss asked.

Even in larger health care facilities, like Valley Regional Hospital, sexual and reproductive services are limited due to staffing. According to former Claremont Mayor Charlene Lovett, a longtime advocate for local public health, Valley Regional only has one obstetrician-gynecologist on staff, who works part time and sees patients two days per week.

The Planned Parenthood clinic has also helped fill other needs where Valley Regional’s staffing services are limited, including treatment of HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), family planning and consultations with patients with regard to STDs, mental health disorders, substance abuse and contraceptives.

“They have played a very needed role in our area health network,” Lovett said.

In 2021, Sullivan County had a poverty rate of 15.2%, the highest in New Hampshire, and a teen pregnancy rate of 15.3 per 1,000 adolescent women, second-highest behind rural Coos County, which recorded 18.1 per 1,000 adolescent women, according to kidscount.org, a nonprofit nationwide data center.

Planned Parenthood said that fiscal challenges necessitated the closures of the centers, which include Vermont clinics in Bennington, Hyde Park, Middlebury and St. Albans.

“We were faced with significant challenges and had to look at what would be a more sustainable model,” said Nicole Clegg, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of Northern New England.

Those fiscal challenges include nationwide shifts in how health care is delivered, resulting in a reduction of certain types of health screenings, staffing shortages and revenue losses suffered during the pandemic.

The organization has also suffered from the “ongoing political attacks” in which federal or state legislatures have pushed bills to defund Planned Parenthood or restrict its operations, Clegg said.

Because of the country’s contentious divide regarding issues such as contraception and abortion, which Planned Parenthood assists through patient referrals, Planned Parenthood “isn’t treated the same way as other health care providers,” Clegg said.

The regional Planned Parenthood branch currently has 20 health centers, with 11 in Vermont, five in New Hampshire and four in Maine. However, many of these have been open only part-time, two or three days a week, including the five centers slated to close.

Planned Parenthood plans to allocate the savings from the five closed facilities to expand to full-time operating hours at its Vermont centers in Barre, Brattleboro and Williston.

“We won’t be (in Claremont) in a brick-and mortar sense,” Clegg said. “But we will be there through telehealth and will continue to offer our services to the best we can.”

Planned Parenthood is directing patients to other area hospitals or health care providers that provide most or all of the services that Planned Parenthood administered: Valley Regional Hospital and Keady Family Practice in Claremont; the Newport Health Center in Newport; the Charlestown Health Center in Charlestown; and Springfield Gynecology in Springfield, Vt.

Patrick Adrian can be reached at pfadrian25@gmail.com.