Heidi Group tries for funding
Troubled nonprofit applying for U.S. grant as state health provider
When Texas health officials broke ties with the Heidi Group late last year, it seemed to be the end of a failed effort to turn the anti-abortion group into one of the state’s leading family planning providers.
But the Heidi Group is not finished. The Round Rock nonprofit, led by longtime anti-abortion activist Carol Everett, has quietly applied alongside two other Texas health providers for tens of millions of dollars in federal family planning funding, according to a copy of the group’s grant application
“We believe our involvement will significantly improve the availability and access to these important services.” Carol Everett, Heidi Group leader
obtained by the Chronicle.
The collaboration would be overseen by a Catholic organization called the Obria Group, which is based in Southern California and aggressively vying to become a national alternative to Planned Parenthood. Obria has been denied federal funding in the past, but its prospects have improved since the family planning program, known as Title X, came under leadership last year by the former head of a Christian organization that operates anti-abortion pregnancy centers.
Last month, the Trump administration cut Title X funding to abortion affiliates in an effort to further starve out Planned Parenthood, which has already lost funding from several Republican-led states, including Texas. Planned Parenthood provides most of the non-abortion family planning services to low-income women nationally, including birth control, cancer screenings and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases.
If approved, the federal funding would open a major expansion for Obria into the state, which has the nation’s highest rate of uninsured peo-
ple and an estimated 1.8 million women in need of publicly-funded family planning services. It would be a surprise re-emergence of the Heidi Group, which was cut off from millions in state funding last October after two years of underwhelming results and more than $1 million in questioned expenses.
Several state officials have distanced themselves from Everett since, and an investigation into the group’s financial records by the Health and Human Services Commission’s inspector general is ongoing.
Grant decisions soon
Under the new proposal, Obria would manage the grant money, with medical duties split among the Heidi Group, Midland Community Healthcare Services, and Community Wellness Clinic in Conroe. The group is asking for nearly $8 million annually for three years, with a goal to serve just over 15,000 patients each year.
“We believe our involvement will significantly improve the availability and access to these important services,” Everett wrote in a letter submitted with the application. She declined to comment further.
Currently, Texas receives about $13 million a year from Title X. The Women’s Health and Family Planning Association of Texas, which has administered the funds for the past five fiscal years, served 195,000 patients in 2018 — 13 times as many as Obria is proposing — according to its annual report. It is competing with Obria and the state Health and Human Services Commission, which has requested $16 million annually to serve 53,000 patients.
Grant decisions are expected any day. The program’s next fiscal year begins April 1.
Obria has been turned down for Title X in the past because it does not support the use of condoms and other kinds of birth control beyond so-called natural family planning methods, in which women track their menstrual cycle and refrain from sex when most fertile. This year’s application for Texas says all forms of contraception would be offered, as is required, though it’s not clear whether that would be on-site or through referrals only. Critics say referrals reduce the likelihood that a woman will actually receive and use her preferred form of birth control.
Error in application
The Heidi Group was created as an activist group and only recently entered the direct care business. When it first received money from the state, in 2016, it operated much like Obria has proposed to do, subcontracting with established family planning clinics throughout the state.
To stay in the program, however, Medicaid officials last year required the Heidi Group to open its own clinic, which it now runs in a small shopping center off Interstate 35 in Round Rock. The clinic says it serves slightly more than 100 patients per week, on average. It would continue serving that many under Title X, according to the application.
Leslie Willkom, a former employee who left the Heidi Group earlier this month, said during her tenure the clinic served about 8 patients per day, “on a good day.”
Willkom is one of several employees to leave in the past year, some of whom have complained about a difficult work environment under Everett. One of them has filed complaints with the Texas Workforce Commission.
Another former employee, a nurse named Ronda Schultz, appears repeatedly in the Title X application as a top quality assurance officer. But Schultz says she left the Heidi Group last April, nearly a year before the proposal was submitted. She now works as an investigator for the state health commission.
“I did not know any of this,” Schultz said when notified that her name and résumé were included. “This really upsets me,” she said. “My integrity is everything.”
The Heidi Group says it is looking into the error. A spokeswoman for Obria said officials there were traveling and unavailable to comment.
In a letter submitted with the grant application, Everett made no mention of the group’s terminated state contracts, or the ongoing audit. She wrote that the group began moving into women’s health services in 2005. It ran a pregnancy center in Dallas until about 2009. Pregnancy centers typically offer services such as pregnancy testing, ultrasounds and basic prenatal care.
Under her state contracts, Everett had agreed to serve 67,000 patients, but served only a few thousand in 2017, according to data from the Health and Human Services Commission. The Heidi Group believes it served thousands more patients than the state has reported, though it has yet to prove it. It is working to put forth its own numbers in coming days.