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Medicines360 Statement on Title X Rule Change

September 11, 2019

As the leading nonprofit pharmaceutical company addressing women’s most pressing health needs, Medicines360 has continuously and strongly opposed the new rule restricting Title X-funded clinics from providing patients with medically accurate and comprehensive health information.

Our concerns about this rule’s impact on the availability, accessibility and affordability of quality women’s health and family planning services are already being realized, as the change is driving highly qualified providers out of the Title X program. The effect is real: an immediate harm to millions of women who will no longer have access through a healthcare professional to information about all 18 FDA-approved contraceptive methods, nor the exams, screenings and referrals essential for good health.

Political agendas should not stand in the way of healthcare professionals sharing medically accurate information with their patients in the exam room. This rule change amounts to a serious and unethical intrusion into the relationship between patients and their healthcare providers. Medicines360 calls on the administration to restore the ability of Title X providers to discuss medically accurate and comprehensive health information. As reported by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), this rule undermines expert opinion and evidence-based practices and harms the health of women.

About Medicines360

Located in San Francisco, California, Medicines360 is a global nonprofit pharmaceutical organization with a mission to accelerate the timeline from health innovation to access for all women. Medicines360 is committed to working with healthcare providers, advocacy groups, and patients to deliver innovative and meaningful treatments that help women around the world have greater access to the medicines they need. For more information, visit www.medicines360.org.

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Tina Raine-Bennett, MD, MPH, FACOG

Chief Executive Officer

Tina Raine-Bennett, MD, MPH, is CEO of Medicines360. Previously, she served as a senior research scientist at the Kaiser Permanente Northern California Division of Research and the research director of the Women’s Health Research Institute. She is a Board-Certified Obstetrician Gynecologist who received her medical training at the University of California, San Diego, and post-graduate residency training and MPH at the University of Washington in Seattle, where she also completed a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Fellowship. She was also senior staff physician at Kaiser Permanente and has a special interest in family planning and adolescent reproductive health.

As the director of the Women’s Health Research Institute, Dr. Raine-Bennett focused on expanding research on women’s health within the Division and translating women’s health research into clinical practice and policy within the Ob/Gyn departments in Northern California. She also promoted the involvement of clinicians in research designed to improve the health outcomes and healthcare experiences of women at Kaiser Permanente and women in general.

Prior to Kaiser Permanente, Dr. Raine-Bennett was a professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). She was based at San Francisco General Hospital where she was also the medical director of the New Generation Health Center, a UCSF affiliate site that provides community-based reproductive health services. Dr. Raine-Bennett’s research has focused on contraceptive methods and on elucidating factors that influence contraceptive choice and continuation, and she was principal investigator on NIH grants to assess hormonal contraceptive use predictors and develop interventions to improve contraceptive access.

Her past and current research on emergency contraception has focused on the safety of making emergency contraception more accessible and she conducted a pivotal clinical trial to make emergency contraception available to teens without a prescription. She served on the editorial board of Obstetrics and Gynecology and has over 100 peer-reviewed publications. She was the Treasurer of the Board of Directors for the Society of Family Planning and Society of Family Planning Research Fund. She has also served as an examiner for the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and on national committees for the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the National Medical Board of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.