Low-income Evanston residents may soon have more access to health care services in the city.

The city’s Department of Health and Human Services is seeking partners for a new health clinic that will address issues such as the increasing rate of pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases among residents.

Currently, there is a lack of family planning services for low-income households, HHS Director Evonda Thomas said.

To make up for this deficiency, the city is looking to work with an existing health clinic to provide pregnancy and STD services to underserved areas using federally qualified funding or a hospital with outpatient services, she said.

Health departments typically don’t provide such services themselves, Thomas said. If a hospital or health clinic already provides these services nearby, it makes sense for the department to establish a partnership with the organization rather than establish its own clinic, she said.

The city hopes to choose the partner and location of the health clinic­ in the next 10 months.The City of Evanston formerly operated six health clinics but closed its STD, HIV, tuberculosis and immunization clinics in June 2007 to balance its budget, she said.Mayor Elizabeth Tisdahl said the increasing rate of STDs and pregnancies among city residents is worrisome.

“We’ve known since we closed the health center that we made a mistake,” she said.

In the last two years, there has been a 25 percent increase in the number of STDs among residents between the ages of 14 and 19, Thomas said.

This trend is not limited to Evanston, she said.

“It’s indicative of the city, the state and the nation,” Thomas said, adding it is hard to convince teenagers to get tested and seek treatment.

In addition, the state has one of the highest STD prevalence rates in the nation, said Lara Philipps, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of Illinois.

Tisdahl said the city could not pursue a new health clinic to meet the needs of its residents as soon as it wanted because it didn’t know what the fate of federal health care funding would be.

“We could not do much before health care was passed on a national level,” she said.Access to resources for STD treatments exists in some high schools, however.

Evanston Township High School offers a school-based health center that provides reproductive health services such as screening for STDs, pregnancy testing and sexuality counseling and education to students who have parental consent.

However, not all ETHS students have consent from their parents to use the clinic’s reproductive health services and have limited access to seek them elsewhere, Thomas said.

“People typically like to stay in their community to receive care,” she said. [email protected]