The local and state public health infrastructure has been decimated. While likewise burdened with inadequate funding to address growing needs, private nonprofit organizations have taken it upon themselves to provide much-needed services to the highest-risk populations. The St. Louis Healthy Start Project, a federally funded program of the St. Louis Maternal, Child and Family Health Coalition, is working to reduce the impact that these poor birth outcomes have on families and to reduce costs associated with those outcomes’ larger societal impacts.
In partnership with the Nurses for Newborns Foundation, the Maternal, St. Louis Healthy Start project provides intensive outreach and case management, comprehensive health education, depression screening and referral, and inter-conceptional care to low-income women residing in ZIP codes 63113, 63120 and 63136. We utilize a team of registered nurses and women from this community as community-outreach mothers to provide home visitation and case management, during pregnancy and for two years after birth. Healthy Start clients receive depression screenings and referrals, health education, and we make sure their basic needs are being met. This proven approach to public health drastically reduced the number of babies dying in other communities served by the national Healthy Start effort over the last 15 years, and it can work here too.
Though relatively new to the St. Louis area, the program and the Maternal, Child, and Family Health Coalition are working in partnership with over 150 nonprofit and faith-based organizations, federally qualified health centers, and the local health departments to address these needs and to repair a broken system that ensures the health and well-being of our most vulnerable.
Sandii Leland Handrick, MPH, CHES
St. Louis Healthy Start Project Director