Health official leaves after disputed study

Republicans had denounced report about cuts to Planned Parenthood

AUSTIN — A top Texas health official is stepping down after co-authoring a study that drew strong backlash from Republican leaders for suggesting that cuts to Planned Parenthood are restricting access to women’s health care statewide.

Rick Allgeyer is leaving his post as director of research at the 55,000-employee Texas Health and Human Services Commission effective March 31, agency spokesman Bryan Black said Thursday.

Allgeyer, who has worked in Texas government for more than 20 years, was one of five coauthors of a study published this month in the New England Journal of Medicine, one of the nation’s most prominent medical journals.

It found that fewer women in Texas have obtained long-acting birth control, such as intrauter- ine devices, since the GOP-controlled Legislature barred the nation’s largest abortion provider from a state women’s health program in 2013. Births paid for under Medicaid also increased among some women.

Republican leaders rebuked the study and demanded answers from state health leaders about Allgeyer’s involvement.

“Rick Allgeyer is eligible for retirement and has decided to retire from the Health and Human Services Commission,” Black said in a statement.

Allgeyer did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

Black has said that Allgeyer had not previously told agency leaders that he was working on the study.

A second co- author, Imelda Flores-Vazquez, also works for the state health agency, but Black did not address her status. According to a LinkedIn page, Flores-Vazquez joined the agency in 2014 and is a program specialist.

Powerful Republican state Sen. Jane Nelson previously dismissed the findings as invalid, in part because the research was funded by the nonprofit Susan T. Buffet Foundation, which is a major supporter of Planned Parenthood and other abortion-rights groups.

She also questioned why two state health employees were among the co-authors.

Planned Parenthood officials said the study showed the impact of “politically motivated” decisions.

Texas barred Planned Parenthood from state planning services the same year that then-Gov. Rick Perry signed tough abortion restrictions that shuttered clinics across the state.

Those restrictions are scheduled to go before the U.S. Supreme Court next month in a major abortionrights case that will likely impact similar measures adopted in other GOP-controlled states.