Health

Juneau’s Planned Parenthood Health Center closed in November and won’t reopen, leaving the community with less access to reproductive healthcare.

Planned Parenthood offers a wide range of reproductive healthcare, including no or low-cost access to vaccines, regular wellness screenings, STD testing and treatment, prenatal and postpartum services, contraception and abortions.

The center was initially closed for building repairs. An email announcement to patients on Thursday morning said the organization decided to keep it closed.

It read “This decision was not made lightly and reflects a careful evaluation of patient needs, access to care in Alaska, and the challenges facing sexual and reproductive health care today.”

According to Jennifer Martinez, a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest, Hawai‘i, Alaska, Indiana, Kentucky, the cost of repairs to the building, and the threat of reduced funding in this political climate factored into the decision.

“We are trying to consolidate resources as we’re able to, just to enable our affiliate to continue to move forward with our mission and ensuring that we’re providing the care that our patients need in all six states,” she said.

She says the organization also closed another health center in Twin Falls, Idaho.

Martinez says patients that used Planned Parenthood’s services in Juneau will be able to receive some care through telehealth, and can continue receiving birth control that can be self-administered.

“We’ve been here for over 100 years,” she said. “We’re going to keep fighting and do whatever it takes so that the patients in Juneau, Alaska, and the country, continue to receive the care that they need and deserve, specifically with regards to reproductive and sexual health care, including abortion care.”

Several providers in town still offer services that patients received at the clinic, including reproductive care, gender-affirming care for transgender patients and STI testing. Several of them accept Medicaid or offer services on a sliding scale. For example, JAMHI Health and Wellness offers STI screenings, treatment, and reproductive care at a sliding scale.

But at this time, no other healthcare organizations provide abortion care in Southeast Alaska. Its closure means the nearest access is at Alaska’s remaining two Planned Parenthood health centers in Fairbanks and Anchorage or in Washington state. Bartlett Regional Hospital is able to provide care for miscarriages.

Two major Alaskan seafood processors have agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit alleging wage violations during the COVID-19 pandemic.

OBI Seafoods and Ocean Beauty Seafoods were ordered to pay a total of $2.1 million as part of a settlement approved last week by Judge Marsha J. Pechman in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington.

The case, brought by former employees Marija and Dusan Paunovic on behalf of processing facility workers, accused the companies of delaying wage payments and underpaying workers during mandatory quarantine periods.

OBI has 10 facilities in the state and was formed in 2020 through a merger between Ocean Beauty and former Alaskan processor Icicle Seafoods. Ocean Beauty currently owns a stake in the company as part of the new ownership group.

In email correspondence with KDLG, OBI’s chief executive officer John Hanrahan said that all workers at the company’s processing facility in Naknek were paid a daily stipend during the quarantine period, and were provided with free housing, meals, and laundry services.

“OBI Seafoods values its employees, pays competitive wages, and complies with all federal, state, and local wage laws and regulations,” Hanrahan said.

The plaintiffs, however, contended that the stipend was insufficient for extended quarantine periods. They argued the companies failed to adequately compensate employees for time spent in isolation as required by Alaska’s Wage and Hour Act and the federal Fair Labor Standards Act.

As part of the settlement, each of the more than 2,300 class members will receive $536, with some payouts exceeding $3,100, after deductions for legal fees and administrative costs.

The agreement also includes $630,000 in attorney fees, $100,000 for litigation costs, and $20,000 in service awards for the two lead plaintiffs. Administrative costs of up to $32,000 will be deducted from the settlement fund. The remainder will be distributed pro rata based on workers’ quarantine periods and delayed wages.

According to court documents, the settlement financially covers roughly three-quarters of the damages cited by the lawsuit’s class members. A court website contains more information about the settlement for class members, as well as options to opt out of it.

The criminal case against Jeffrey Fultz, the chiropractor accused of assaulting more than a dozen women under the guise of medical care, is on track to go to trial in February after three years and 32 readiness hearings. 

At a hearing Wednesday, Assistant District Attorney Jessalyn Gillum said the repeated delays in this case have taken a toll on the alleged victims who call in to testify at most hearings.

“The idea of just sort of delaying for delay’s sake does sometimes have an adverse effect on witnesses’ willingness to participate,” she said. “They get tired, they get fed up.”

Police arrested Fultz in 2021 on three charges of sexual assault. Those charges are based on accusations that he assaulted patients who sought chiropractic care while he worked for Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium. More women have come forward since. A total of 14 women have now accused Fultz of assault. Some of the crimes date back more than a decade.

A number of factors have delayed the trial, including the case’s complexity, the number of witnesses, and a backlog of criminal cases in Juneau during the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the last three years, the first judge assigned to the case retired, the investigating Juneau police officer died, and Fultz’s attorney was deemed “mentally unable” to continue with the case. 

Fultz has been living in Colorado since he posted bail three years ago. He has made one in-person appearance in court since.

Fultz’s attorney James Christie took on the case last January. He has requested that the witnesses who call in to court to testify be publicly identified and has filed a motion to request broader access to witnesses’ medical records. The judge denied both requests.

Christie has also argued at each hearing that his team hasn’t had enough time to review the case.

“I understand that everyone on the line has rights here and my client’s constitutional right to a fair trial trumps all of them,” he said on Wednesday.

Presiding Judge Larry Woolford scheduled hearings around a Feb. 18 trial date. 

Gillum acknowledged that this isn’t a simple case, but said the case has been delayed for three years and it has to go to trial.

“It is the court’s responsibility at the end of the day, I think, to ensure that all the rights of individuals involved are being protected and also balanced,” she said. “Defendants have the right to a fair trial. They have the right to a speedy trial. Victims also have rights under the Victim’s Rights Act.”

One alleged victim called in to Wednesday’s hearing. She said she has been waiting for this trial to happen for a long time, and it’s been hard on her. 

“Each time we have these hearings and it keeps getting continued, it is just a constant retraumatization of the victims,” she said. “It feels like it’s never going to be resolved and the longer it goes the more it feels like we don’t matter. It also feels like he gets to live his life and be happy.” 

Judge Woolford scheduled a readiness hearing for Dec. 27 at 9 a.m. He says he has blocked out a five week trial starting on Feb. 18, 2025.

Six Southeast Alaska communities are getting renewed wastewater discharge permits that require better controls of bacteria flowing into the receiving waters, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced on Thursday.

The communities – Haines, Skagway, Sitka, Wrangell, Ketchikan and Petersburg – must make improvements to reduce what are deemed to be overly high levels of fecal coliform and enterococcus bacteria that are being discharged into marine waters, under terms of the renewed permits

The Haines, Skagway, Sitka and Wrangell permits were issued on Thursday, while the Ketchikan and Petersburg permits are expected to be issued in early 2025.

Draft permits for the communities were issued in 2022 and 2023.

The six communities are among a small number of municipalities in the United States that are allowed to perform only the most rudimentary treatment when discharging wastewater. They have that exemption because they discharge into marine waters, according to the EPA.

That level of treatment, called primary treatment, involves the screening of floating solids. Most communities in the nation use at least secondary treatment for wastewater, which employs biological and chemical processes to remove more solids. And many communities involve tertiary treatment, which employs more sophisticated technology to clean wastewater.

There are only 24 communities in the United States that are allowed waivers from the Clean Water Act’s requirement of at least secondary treatment of wastewater, according to the EPA. Nine of those communities are in Alaska, according to the agency. Those exemptions are allowed only for systems that discharge into saltwater environments, according to the agency.

Among the six Southeast communities getting renewed permits, some do use forms of disinfection as well as the basic screening of solids, but that disinfection is not consistent, according to the EPA.

The updated wastewater discharge permits for the six communities are written to accommodate state water quality standards that were tightened in 2017. Those state standards concern bacteria levels in waters used for recreation and subsistence food-gathering.

The communities have five years to make the necessary improvements to meet those tighter state standards, under the permits’ terms.

Getting to that point will require capital investment, the EPA said in a statement.  Low-interest loans for such investments are available through Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation’s State Revolving Fund Program.

The permits, which have mandates tailored to specific communities, require periodic testing of the marine environment into which the treated wastewater flows. That includes surveys of the seafloor environment and the marine life in it, such as local populations of sunflower sea stars, which are considered imperiled because of a widespread disease. The new permits also require notices advising people against consuming shellfish harvested within mixing zones, which are the designated areas where discharged effluent is intended to be diluted.

The first home care workers in Alaska to join a union specializing in their industry have approved new contracts that set higher starting wages and establish a series of other benefits.

Nearly 1,000 employees of the state’s two largest home care companies, Consumer Direct and All Ways Caring, agreed to the contracts through their union, the Service Employees International Union 775.

The workers approved the contracts earlier this month, SEIU 775 said. The contracts set starting wages at $22.25 an hour, rising to $23.50 in July. There are higher wages for more experienced caregivers, a premium for those in areas with higher living costs and other benefits, including establishment of a grievance process.

“I helped fight to win this contract because it means my family and I won’t have to choose which bills we can pay. We won’t have to struggle like that anymore. It’s going to make a big difference for us,” Essie Frank, a Fairbanks caregiver and member of the All Ways Caring bargaining team, said in a statement released by SEIU 775. “It also means we’ll get more people who want to do caregiving working as caregivers because we can afford to do it.”

Among Alaska’s approximately 5,660 home health and personal care aides, the mean hourly wage was $18.53 in 2023, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That average put Alaska in fifth place among states for pay in the sector.

The contracts approved by the Consumer Direct and All Ways Caring workers raised pay rates by $3 an hour, said Elana Rhys, a union spokesperson. Starting pay had been below $20 an hour at both agencies, she said.

Employees of Consumer Direct joined SEIU 775 in the summer of 2023 and the All Ways Caring workers joined the union the months later, in winter,  Rhys said.

They are the first Alaska workers to join SEIU 775, she said.

Including the Alaska employees, SEIU 775 now represents more than 53,000 long-term care workers in three states: Washington, Montana and Alaska.

Other Alaska health care workers are members of different unions. Anchorage-based Alaska Laborers Local 341, for example, represents nurses and service workers at Alaska Regional Hospital and nurses and certified nursing assistants at PrestigeCare, operator of a facility in Anchorage.

Alaska’s need for home care workers and long-term care workers is increasing as the state’s population ages, with demand outstripping supply, state officials have noted.

“Growth in the direct care workforce has not kept pace with the growth in the senior population,” said the most recent Alaska State Plan for Senior Services.

Worker shortages have plagued both home care services and assisted living facilities, according to the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority.

While the percentage of elderly residents in the state is one of the smallest in the nation, that population segment is growing faster in Alaska than in any other state.

Representatives of Consumer Direct and All Ways Caring were not immediately available late Monday afternoon to comment on the newly approved contracts.

Margie Thomson sat in her office, holding a heart made of clay in her hands. It’s painted the colors of the transgender pride flag – pink, white and blue. Thomson is a therapist here in Juneau, and she said she’s nervous to speak publicly about the risks to gender-affirming care in Alaska. 

But, now, she said, is the time to stand up and use her voice to support her clients, who are overwhelmingly transgender. She said she’s served 350 people in Alaska who identify as gender-expansive, people whose gender identity, expression, or experience doesn’t align with the sex they were assigned at birth. 

Alaska’s transgender community is worried that a second Donald Trump presidency might threaten their access to gender-affirming care, or health care that allows people to transition medically — and providers in the state are worried too. 

On the day after the election, Thomson had four new requests from patients asking for referrals for gender-affirming care — in case they lose access to it. 

“I think a lot of people are worried that that might go away,” she said. “So even though they don’t have the money now and they’re going to go in debt, they want to get the referral.” 

Thomson said several providers in Juneau support gender-affirming care services. No one has told her they plan to stop.

“Right now, we have a strong community, and they’re hopefully going to get stronger and pull together,” she said. “Yet the fear is real and the risk is real.”

And Alaska’s two main providers for gender-affirming care say getting a jump on services may be the right move.

President-elect Donald Trump made campaign promises to block gender-affirming care for youth, and to stop federal dollars going towards care, including Medicare and Medicaid.  

And he’s done this before. Rose O’Hara Jolley is the Alaska State Director for Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates. Planned Parenthood is one of the biggest providers of reproductive and gender-affirming care in Alaska.

They said that during Trump’s first term in office, he blocked funding to Planned Parenthood by removing abortion providers from Title X, the more than 50-year-old federal grant program that provides reproductive care across the nation. This made it harder for low-income patients to receive reproductive care from providers like Planned Parenthood.

The Biden administration reversed those changes, but OʼHara-Jolley said itʼs likely Trump will do the same again, which would impact the organizationʼs ability to provide health care, including gender-affirming care.

“But we know that these attacks are coming because they have already started them, and now that they are in positions of power, there’s no reason to believe them that they won’t continue with the promises they’ve made,” OʼHara-Jolley said.

But they said that Planned Parenthood has weathered a Trump administration before, and it doesn’t plan on shutting its doors. 

“I want them to know we will continue to provide as much care as we can in all the places, in ways that we can. Unless or until someone forces us to stop. We will not stop providing care,” they said.

Based in Anchorage, Identity Alaska serves nearly 900 transgender patients. Director Tom Pittman said the same funding cuts would apply to them as well, and most of their patients use Medicare and Medicaid.

“It would mean that 70% of our patient revenue would evaporate, which is significant,” he said.

Pittman said that anti-trans rhetoric implies that trans people are a new phenomenon, which isn’t true.

“And this attempt to shift the definitions and histories in order to make a group of people feel this vulnerable, it really is unconscionable,” he said,

Health care for transgender youth has become a hot-button issue for Republican politicians, but the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, and the World Health Organization all support the use of medical gender-affirming care for both adults and youth.  

Aidan Key is an educator who trains schools on how to accommodate trans and gender-expansive youth in Alaska. He said the incoming administration will be hard on all trans people, but he’s worried about youth especially. 

“We as adults are going to need to find our courage to push back and address the situations that do come up because these children’s lives depend on it,” Key said. “I have no doubt — no doubt — that since the election to today, lives are already ended.”

Data from crisis lines support Key’s theory – one national organization that supports LGBTQ+ youth reported a 700 percent spike in calls and texts immediately after the election. 

But he has hope for Alaskaʼs trans community, and he said, in the days ahead, leaning on community is the one thing everyone can do.

If you or a loved one is experiencing a crisis, you can call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK, or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741-741.