These data come from surveillance activities conducted by the Guttmacher Institute over several decades, collecting or compiling data for the period 1994 through 2016. These activities track the numbers of women who have a potential demand for contraceptive care (because they are of reproductive age, sexually active and not seeking to become pregnant), the subset of these women who likely need public support for care (because of their family income level or their age), the numbers of women who receive contraceptive services from publicly funded clinics, and the numbers of clinics providing publicly supported contraceptive services. These efforts have been conducted periodically, typically about every five years, but at times the intervals between efforts were shorter or longer than five years. The most recent data were collected or compiled for 2015 (women served) and 2016 (women with potential demand for services).

This release includes two separate datasets. Dataset 1, "Need for contraceptive services," provides county-level aggregate data for 6 different years (1995, 2000, 2002, 2006, 2010, and 2016). For each county, the data represent estimates of the number of women who have a potential demand for contraceptive services and the number who likely need public support for care, both in total, and according to key socio-demographic characteristics. Dataset 2, "Clinics providing contraceptive services and women served," provides county-level aggregate data for six different years (1994, 1997, 2001, 2006, 2010, and 2015). For each county, the data represent the number of publicly funded clinics according to clinic type and funding status and the number of female contraceptive patients served at those clinics.