When you walk into the Martha’s Vineyard Family Planning office in Vineyard Haven, a large bowl full of condoms greets you. No one is staring at you to see if you’ll be the first one to take a few, no one is whispering to the person next to them, there are no judging eyes.

It is this safe environment that family planning program director Patty Begley has worked hard to establish over the past 27 years, even if it did garner her the title of Condom Queen amongst her children’s friends.

“We always had condoms around the house, so their friends always knew there were condoms there,” Mrs. Begley said at her office earlier this week with a smile on her face that could put anyone at ease. “Whether they blew them up like balloons or what, they needed to get comfortable with them . Their friends knew they could talk to me, and some of them did.”

Mrs. Begley will take these memories with her when she leaves family planning at the end of the month and begins working as an office nurse in the obstetrics and gynecology department at the hospital in January. She’ll leave the administration part of her job behind in favor of more time with patients.

What began as a job that provided more family time by not requiring her to work evenings and weekends, over the years turned into the job of running an Island resource of free HIV testing, examinations and birth control.

“I think [reproductive health issues] have changed,” Mrs. Begley said in her soft manner. “There are a lot more [birth control] methods available to women now . The study of reproductive health has improved and how we’re doing things.”

While she can’t say reproductive health is a top issue on the Vineyard, Mrs. Begley said the number of teen pregnancies is consistent with other similar communities if not less, and Islanders take advantage of the resources here.

One of Mrs. Begley’s last missions at family planning is promoting HIV/AIDS testing.

“[The Department of Public Health] is very interested in everyone knowing their status,” she said. “If you and your partner both know each other’s status you can then make some decisions. But if you don’t know your status, you’re working in a void.

“That’s one way to get the word out without being intimidating,” she said. “People think, ‘Well, you think I need HIV testing, you must think I’m doing something inappropriate or wrong.’ And it’s not that at all, it’s just knowing your status like you know if you’ve had vaccinations.”

Getting the word out without encroaching on people’s comfort level and privacy has proved to be a challenge over her years, most significantly in the public school system. By involving students on the Friends of Family Planning board, having student participation in the annual art show in May, and word of mouth, family planning carefully bridges that divide.

“We have to be careful because of privacy issues and HIPAA [the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act],” she said. “So when people come here their visits are very private ... we do everything we can to protect that privacy.

Resigning after 27 years of careful guidance. — Mark Alan Lovewell

“On the other hand, we want people to know that we’re here and feel welcome to come here and we don’t want to offend anyone, we don’t want to offend parents, teenagers, we don’t talk down to anybody,” Mrs. Begley added. “We’re very professional and very private and we follow HIPAA to the law.”

Mrs. Begley has tried various ways to reach out to students, noting different superintendents have had different comfort levels with allowing family planning in the schools.

“It hasn’t been particularly successful to work within the confines of the school,” Mrs. Begley said. “I think the school is sensitive to the fact that kids can come here without parental permission and that might make some parents upset. So going to the school and seeing the kids without their permission would be upsetting too.”

Other challenges have included limited funding and changing state and federal regulations that come and go with new administrations. Family planning provides pregnancy testing and referrals but does not perform abortions, giving patients as much information as possible.

“It’s such a hot topic and so based on regulations from the federal or state government, we have to figure out ways to still make the service available to people to give them all their legal rights and to comply with all the requests of the law,” Mrs. Begley said. “That’s been a challenge and I think that will continue to be an ongoing challenge.

“I think just knowing it’s always going to be a challenge and it’s an ongoing thing is important to keep in mind,” she added. “It’s never settled. It never feels like it’s ever settled.”

So, when should you have “the talk” with your kids?

“It’s a lot easier to do that before your kids are sexually active, the younger you can do it the easier it is for everybody,” Mrs. Begley suggests. “You can have a more honest open communication because no one, has to worry about, are they doing it? Are they not doing it? It’s just a conversation. Parents have conversations with their kids all the time about what food their eating, where they’re hanging out, and this has to be just one more of those conversations.”

Sometimes it’s not so much a “birds and the bees” talk as it is a discussion about what values are important to them and important to the family, Mrs. Begley said, adding it’s a conversation that belongs in the family.

“Kids at some point have to take responsibility for their decisions and their choices, and it’s nice for them to have a place to come to where they can talk openly with people who can just give them information so they can take care of themselves,” she said. “I think it’s really important to take care of yourself when you’re young so you have all your options in the future.”

Mrs. Begley is looking forward to “stretching her brain” at her new job by learning more about prenatal care and getting comfortable with the latest innovations, as well as more time with patients and less time with budgets. But she can’t forget some of the highlights of her work at family planning, including working with her staff and the board. But it’s her interaction with clients that have brought her back to work every day.

“That is one of the most fun things about this job, seeing young women who come here and they grow up ,and then they come as these perfectly formed, well-informed adults,” she said. “That, to all of us, is a lot of the fun in being here and seeing young women and men grow up into incredible human beings.”