Partnerships with Maternal and Child Health Care Providers

New Haven Healthy Start (NHHS) received a 5-year, $4.5 million Federal grant in 2009. Since 1997, The Community Foundation has raised nearly $17 million to administer the program. NHHS has provided services to more than 20,000 pregnant women and infants through partnerships with maternal and child health care providers such as Yale-New Haven Hospital, Hospital of St. Raphael, Hill Health Center, Fair Haven Community Health Center and New Haven Family Alliance.

Everyday, New Haven Healthy Start (NHHS) provides a continuum of improvements to a fragmented maternal and child healthcare system using a comprehensive care coordination model. Among other things, the model includes case management and outreach services and a Consortium (photos right) that meets six times a year to discuss issues affecting maternal and infant health in the City of New Haven.

"The New Haven Healthy Start Consortium serves as the entity responsible to set strategic direction for the project and to provide general oversight of the project," explains Natasha Ray, Consortia Coordinator.  "It is made up of 60% community residents, health and medical professionals, and social service providers.  Serving as the governing body for the initiative, members of the NHHS Consortium represent a diverse array of expertise, provide valuable advice and perspective regarding the needs and problems existing in the community and help define the design and implementation of the project plan.  In its dual role, the Consortium meetings also bring together those who receive services on one accord with those who provide services.  By creating this dialogue between all participating individuals, it is Healthy Start’s intent to bridge the gap in the Maternal and Child Health service delivery system and to demonstrate the importance of engaging families in designing the services in which they receive."

In 2009, NHHS was awarded a fourth round of federal funding to:

• help reduce New Haven’s remaining health disparity in infant mortality;
• increase its emphasis on multi-pronged outreach strategy;
• strengthen connections with new community resources; 
• enhance case management capabilities for working with women at high-risk of poor birth outcomes. (Special outreach will be made to teens, the homeless, and those who lack insurance coverage and who have had previous poor birth outcomes).

Learn more about the important work of New Haven Healthy Start.