The CCC is implementing three Delivery System Reform Incentive Payment (DSRIP) projects that address sexual, reproductive, and women's health. Two of these projects - STI Testing & Treatment and Pregnancy Planning - are underway; the third, CenteringPregnancy, will be submitted in a few weeks and implemented in the Spring of 2014.

The Sexually Transmitted Infection (STI) Testing & Treatment DSRIP project will provide expanded, free STI testing to 8,000 additional low income Travis County residents. Those who screen positive will receive treatment. Coupled with targeted outreach and education, this project will provide more screening and treatment, reduced infection rates, and improved utilization of services in Travis County - especially among populations that face measurable disparities in the incidence and treatment of STIs.

The Pregnancy Planning project will use social media and education strategies to inform uninsured and under-insured adolescents and young adult women about the prevention of pregnancies and long-acting, reversible contraception (LARC). Over the next year, this project will increase the number of LARC consultations for women younger than 25, and increase LARC insertions for an additional 500 women in Travis County who are under 25 years old. This safe and reversible contraception will be made available to them at no charge. Over the entire course of the project, an additional 1,200 young women will receive these services. Through this outreach, education and access, women will be better able to prevent unintended pregnancies.

CenteringPregnancy is an evidence-based prenatal education and care program that will be expanded in Travis County through a DSRIP project to be submitted in December. Over the course of this project, the CenteringPregnancy program will provide almost 200 African-American women with ten weeks of group education and routine visits with a provider that will occur within the group meeting time. The CenteringPregnancy program has been shown to reduce preterm births, increase birth weights, and increase patient and provider satisfaction. 

Ted Held, MD, serves as Assistant Professor, OB/GYN for UTSW Residency Programs in Austin, Director of Women's Health for CommUnityCare, and as the Women's Health Lead for the Community Care Collaborative. Ted's interest in medicine and health system design began while he was in college at UT Austin in the mid 1980's, during which time he helped design and implement an anonymous HIV testing program at People's Community Clinic.  That experience led to a US Public Health Service scholarship in Medicine at UTMB, where he graduated in 1992.  He completed his residency in OB/GYN at the University of Kentucky in Lexington in 1996 , and returned to Austin to as faculty in the OB/GYN department, where he continues to practice as an assistant professor at the UT Southwestern OB/GYN residency program at Seton. His research interests include studying policy and other structural factors affecting access to care, which he does in collaboration with the departments of social work and sociology at UT Austin.

He has a strong interest in care for the underserved- not just locally, but globally: he has served as a consultant and medical provider for USAID and Doctors of the World in Mexico, Peru, the former Soviet Union, and the Philippines.  Locally, he has served as the Director of Women's Health for CommUnityCare since 2003, is a long-time volunteer at El Buen Samaritano clinic, and was the Medical Director of Austin Women's Hospital from 2004 until it's closure in 2012. 

In addition to his teaching, clinical, and research responsibilities, he is near completion of his Master's in Public Health at UTHSC's Austin Campus, which he undertook to improve his skill set around health systems design and reform.  As the Women's Health lead of the CCC, he intends to incorporate public health and social science perspectives into the group's work, reflecting his view that health outcomes- including women's health outcomes- are often the result of forces and factors beyond the control of the individual woman or her health care provider, and thus require systemic and structural approaches in addition to medical approaches.