Helping Mothers Have Healthy Babies

Our Mission

Baltimore City Healthy Start is committed to improving the health and well-being of pregnant and post partum women, their babies, families, and communities by providing comprehensive, supportive services in the communities where they live.

History

Baltimore City Healthy Start, Inc. (BCHSI), a 501(c) 3 non-profit corporation, was established by the Baltimore City Health Department in 1991 to administer the planning and implementation of the original federal healthy start infant mortality reduction initiative. Infant mortality is when a baby dies before the age of one. The non-profit corporate structure was chosen to allow the organization to:

• establish a non-traditional approach, utilizing paraprofessional staff positions;
• create and utilize best practices, and
• implement the program timely so that measurable results could be demonstrated within the original 5 year demonstration period.

Now, 17 years later, BCHSI is one of the nation's premiere corporations working to reduce infant mortality (death of an infant before 1st birthday). The organization provides direct services to the most vulnerable citizens in Baltimore- pregnant and postpartum women, and their babies living in poverty in the city's most socially, economically and medically depressed communities. While Baltimore City is one of the nation's poorest cities with 20% of its residents living at or below the federal poverty line, Healthy Start serves communities where 33% of the residents (98% African American) live in poverty with a median income of 22,629 vs $30,078 for Baltimore City; where more than 50% of residents read below a 8th grade level and did not graduate from high school.

Baltimore City Healthy Start Program utilizes of a cadre of highly skilled, specialized neighborhood health advocates, nurses, certified registered nurse practitioners, and extremely resourceful and knowledgeable administrators. These individuals in coordination with a network of providers and institutions provide high quality family-oriented medical and psychosocial services needed to address disparities in infant mortality and other detrimental perinatal outcomes. BCHSI Clients experiencing disparities in infant mortality are women living in extreme poverty with no primary and prenatal care, unstable housing conditions, limited educational attainment, substance abuse and an array of mental health issues.

Healthy Start services are offered through the child's second birthday. In order to build upon past efforts toward eliminating disparities in prenatal health, BCHSI offers the following core services:

• Outreach and recruitment to all pregnant women, postpartum women with a child less than 6 months of age, women who had a miscarriage, fetal loss or infant death
• Case management to assure initial and ongoing assessments
• Home visiting
• Coordination of health care including transportation and health education/training, guidance and social support
• Mental health and substance abuse screening
• Pregnancy testing
• STD/HIV testing, counseling, and prevention
• Interconception care including administering birth control
• Clinical postpartum exams
• Family planning
• Healthy Relationship Counseling
• Child care and Early Childhood Development Services
• Parenting Groups

Healthy Start services help pregnant women and their families have healthier babies by providing support, encouragement, information, and advocacy. Pregnancy adds new stresses and needs to the lives of women, and Healthy Start helps relieve those stresses and meet those needs by connecting families to resources, advocating on their behalf, and by caring. Healthy Start staff check in on women and families regularly through home visits, and the Neighborhood Healthy Start Centers provide a variety of services to help women and families become stronger.

Many programs have similar goals and many do wonderful work. What sets Baltimore City Healthy Start apart are its persistent outreach and home-visiting efforts which allow the program to understand and meet the needs of the most isolated and highest-risk families in the communities served. Healthy Start reaches the hard-to-reach. Over 75% of the pregnant women in the Healthy Start communities of Sandtown-Wnchester, Harlem Park, Rosemont, Middle East, Highlandtown and Greenmount East, are enrolled in Healthy Start.

Definitions:

VLBW (Very Low Birth Weight) - when a child is born at less than 3.3 pounds (or 1500 grams) - expressed as a percentage of live births.

LBW (Low Birth Weight) - when a child is born at less than 5.8 pounds (or 2500 grams) - expressed as a percentage of live births.

Interconceptional care - care given between pregnancies such as family planning including the administration of birth control.

Interpregnancy interval - the length of time between the birth of one baby and the beginning of the new pregnancy which research shows should be at least 18 months for optimal birth outcomes.