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| Coalition Screening Rates
Completing the Healthy Start screening form is valuable for all mothers regardless of age, race or economic status.
Prenatal Screening Rates* (July 2017 - August 2017)
Coalition Prenatal Screening Rate Goal: 70%
Alachua
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403/637 = 63%
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Bradford
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31/65 = 48%
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Columbia
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89/180 = 49%
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Dixie
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23/30 = 78%
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Gilchrist
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20/41 = 49%
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Hamilton
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15/33 = 46%
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Lafayette
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9/17 = 53%
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Levy
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61/105 = 58%
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Marion
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432/784 = 55%
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Putnam
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84/165 = 51%
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Suwannee
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53/96 = 55%
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Union
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23/32 = 72%
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Coalition Total
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1,243/2,185 = 57%
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State Total
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21,820/49,401 = 44%
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* Prenatal Screening Rate = Total Consenting to Screen / Estimated Number of Pregnant Women
Infant Screening Rates** (July 2016 - June 2017)
Coalition Infant Screening Rate Goal: 85%
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The Women's Center at North Florida
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657/658 = 99%
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| Shands at UF |
489/573 = 85%
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| The Birth Center of Gainesville |
3/6 = 50%
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| Shands at Lakeshore |
124/137 = 91%
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| Munroe Regional Medical Center |
536/536 = 100%
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| The Ocala Birth Center |
3/3 = 100%
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| Loving Arms Birth & Wellness Center |
1/3 = 33%
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Putnam Community Medical Center
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56/56 = 100%
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Coalition Total
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2,036/2,185 = 93%
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State Total
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46,590/49,401 = 94%
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**
Infant Screening Rate = Total Screened/Total Infants
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November is Prematurity Awareness Month
Premature birth is birth that happens before 37 weeks of pregnancy. Babies that are born this early may have more health problems or may need to stay in the hospital longer than babies who are born later and closer to their due date. Each year in the US, for every 10 babies born, 1 of them is born prematurely.
Prematurity can cause long-term health problems for babies. This can have long lasting financial effects and can affect a person's education and ability to work later in life.
How Much Does Premature Birth Cost Society?
In 2007, the Institute of Medicine reported that the cost associated with premature birth in the US was $26.2 billion each year. See below to see how the numbers add up:
- $16.9 billion in medical and health costs for the baby
- $1.9 billion in labor and delivery costs for mom
- $611 million for early intervention services. These are the programs for children from birth to age 3 with disabilities and developmental delays. They help children learn physical, thinking, communicating, social and self-help skills that normally develop before age 3.
- $1.1 billion for special education services. These services are specially designed for children with disabilities ages 3 through 21. They help children with development and learning. Children can get these services at school, at home, in hospitals and in other places, as needed.
- $5.7 billion in lost work and pay for people born prematurely.
How Does Premature Birth Affect A Child's Performance In School?
Premature babies may have a harder time in school than babies born on time. They're more likely to have learning and behavior problems throughout childhood. This may lead to low test scores, having to repeat grades and needing special education services. For every 3 children born prematurely, 1 will need special school services at some point during their school years. The Institute of Medicine says these services cost an estimated $2,200 per year per child. Learning problems may not appear until elementary school or even middle school.
Even babies born at 36 to 38 weeks of pregnancy can struggle in school. Studies show that premature birth increases the likelihood that a child does poorly in school. In the last few weeks of pregnancy, a baby's brain is still developing and growing. In fact, a baby's brain at 35 weeks weighs only two-thirds of what it weigh at 39 to 40 weeks. This is why if your pregnancy is healthy, it's best to stay pregnant for at least 39 weeks. This gives your baby's brain and other organs the time they need to develop before birth.
How Does Premature Birth Affect A Person's Ability To Work?
Premature birth can affect a person's being able to work, the amount of work he can do or both. Some adults who were born prematurely may have long-term health conditions that prevent or limit them from working.
The Supplemental Security Income (also called SSI) program pays benefits to disabled adults and children who have limited income and resources. We don't know exactly how many adults getting SSI were born prematurely. But as the average person in the US lives to be about 79, long-term health problems that prevent a person from working could be covered by this government program for many years.
Prematurity Awareness Month
November is Prematurity Awareness Month and when the March of Dimes focuses the nation's attention on premature birth. The awareness month kicks off with the release of the Premature Birth Report Card. November 17th marks World Prematurity Day, and the March of Dimes and their partner organizations worldwide ask that everyone help spread the word on the serious problem of premature birth.
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Our Legislative Budget Requests
Issue 1: Enhanced Services for Drug Addicted Pregnant Women and Drug-Exposed Infants
Drug Exposed Newborns - From 2005 to 2016, there were combined total of 17,931 infants born diagnosed with Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome in Florida. The number has increased from 338 in 2005 to 4,215 in 2016. A coordinated effort is needed. Healthy Start is in a strategic position to intervene due to the infrastructure in place in local communities and our successful track record of engaging the target population of at-risk pregnant women and infants.
Family Engagement Specialist - Healthy Start proposes to strategically place new Family Engagement Specialist positions across the state of Florida to provide outreach, education, and service coordination for pregnant women addicted to drugs and families with drug-exposed newborns. This model is based on the successful project in Flagler and Volusia counties where 97% of women accepting services had a completed assessment; 100% of women with a completed assessment had documentation of an individual plan of care; and 100% of infants had follow-up with a pediatric medical home.
We are requesting $3.8 million general revenue to provide new services to Florida mothers with drug exposed newborns and pregnant women addicted to drugs.
Issue 2: Newly Designed Healthy Start System of Care
Beginning July 2018, Healthy Start, at the direction of and in partnership with DOH and AHCA, will implement a newly designed Healthy Start model and system of care to achieve even greater impact on infant mortality, prematurity and healthy child development. The new system of care builds on our 25 years of experience and offers proven, targeted services for mothers and babies, leveraging community resources, integrating costly evidence-based interventions, and coordinating with Medicaid managed care plans. Additional funding will ensure Healthy Start has the resources required to more effectively serve those at greatest risk and produce measureable improvements in outcomes.
We are requesting $7.18 million in state general revenue. We will draw down an additional $6.32 million in federal match for the Medicaid portion of services.
Issue 3: Medicaid Funding Shortfall
With more than $7 million in unpaid services, Healthy Start Medicaid funding has not been sufficient to meet the needs for at-risk pregnant women and babies each year since the beginning of MMA. We have a3-year total of more than $7 million in unpaid services provided by the Healthy Start Coalitions. The number of Medicaid-eligible pregnant women and infants served by Healthy Start has increased from 59,692 to 151,979 over the last 4 years with no increase in funding. Intensity and duration of services is important to achieve optimal outcomes; however, these have decreased because of the insufficient funding. Many Coalitions have used their local reserves and leveraged local funding to support the past shortfall, but for many, these resources have been depleted.
Without the additional funding, approximately 5,500 pregnant women and infants will not receive services. The impact varies by Healthy Start Coalition region. 64% (20 of 32) of Healthy Start Coalitions will need to cut services and more than 61 service workers will be laid off.
We are requesting $1.3 million in state general revenue, which will draw down an additional $2.1 million federal Medicaid match to cover the shortfall for 2017-2018 services.
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Coalition Updates
Board Membership
Please contact
Heather Hollingsworth
if you have someone interested in becoming a Board Director. We are currently looking for representation from the community and consumer categories.
HSNCF is on AmazonSmile
Did you know that you can donate to Healthy Start of North Central Florida just by shopping on Amazon? Want to know how? Just use the following link and continue to shop as you normally would. For every purchase made using this link, Amazon will donate a percentage to the Coalition at no additional cost to you. How cool is that?
https://smile.amazon.com/ch/59-3118984
On behalf of the Healthy Start of North Central Florida Coalition, I'd like to sincerely thank
Leading Ladyfor their very generous donation of breastfeeding covers, bras, belts, capris and more! Their donation if valued at $1,403.00. We are so appreciative of the wonderful support from this amazing company!
Donations for CenteringPregnancy and CenteringParenting Groups
Many of you know that the Healthy Start of North Central Florida Coalition was awarded a March of Dimes Community grant for the CenteringPregnancy and CenteringParenting groups facilitated by UF Health OBGYN and UF Health Pediatrics in Alachua County. Our Business Operations Specialist, Heather, reached out to a number of different businesses and organizations to see if they'd be willing to donate some items for our Centering participants and a few of them generously agreed to help us out!
Pearhead donated a total of 100 pregnancy belly stickers and 40 baby belly stickers for our mothers and babies to use to document their milestones throughout pregnancy and the baby's first year of life. What a great way for our families to be able to capture these special moments as they make their journey into parenthood.
Aden + Anais donated several bibs, swaddles, changing pad covers, hooded towels and more for us to make some great gift baskets with so we can have a drawing for the Centering participants and they have a chance to win some nice things to get them through the first year of life with their new baby.
UF Health College of Dentistry donated 144 adult toothbrushes for our Centering participants that will be used to promote dental hygiene and health for our pregnant mothers and family members. Oral health is a topic of discussion for both the CenteringPregnancy and CenteringParenting group sessions.
We can't thank these wonderful companies and organization enough for their caring hearts and generous donations they've made to the Coalition. We are so grateful to them both!
All Bottoms Covered Diaper Bank
A.B.C. All Bottoms Covered is a new initiative of the Alachua County Perinatal Mental Heath Coalition (ACPMHC) to address the correlation between diaper need (affecting 1 in 3 families) and heightened risk of these same families (3 times over!) for experiencing Postpartum Depression and related mental health conditions. Diaper need can lead to serious health problems for both babies and parents.
The ABC Diaper Bank will reach families through community partnerships with organizations already providing direct services to those with unmet diaper need. Diapers, while a basic necessity for health of babies, is not augmented for by any public service. The ABC Diaper Bank of ACPMHC will serve this ongoing need through donations of diapers and funds raised. Awareness materials with information on the mental health of parents and support and other resources within the community will accompany each package of diapers.
Did you know that 1 in 3 families struggle to provide clean diapers their child needs to remain healthy and happy?
If you are willing and able to make a donation to this amazing cause, please click on the following link:
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MIECHV Coordinated Intake & Referral Program Update
The Coordinated Intake and Referral (CI&R) travel team spent two days in Daytona Beach in June attending the Action Learning Collaborative meeting and had an opportunity to share all the wonderful work and collaboration that is going on in our community and learn more about the successes and lessons learned in other areas of the state.
As we have shared previously, our CI&R pilot program was focused on Alachua County residents only and has been implemented at UF-Shands Hospital, UF-Women's Health Group, and UF-Children's Medical Services since January, 2017. Our grant funding is ending on September 30th, , however, we are excited to share that during our pilot program more than 150 families were referred to a variety of home visiting programs and other services to help with parenting education, breastfeeding, nutrition, basic needs and assistance with children with special needs. Our Family Partner, Carolina Rueda left the program at the end of August to return to school and we are very grateful for her commitment, passion and hard work to implement such a successful program at our three locations. Our social work intern from FSU, Julie Mishoe will be continuing to work with our partners at Shands and CMS until December, 2017 and then we hope to be able to implement the next components of our work through the Newborn Home Visiting Program and the Healthy Start statewide Coordinated Intake and Referral System.
We are very grateful for our many team partners which include: Healthy Families-ACUB, Healthy Start-Alachua (Kids Central, Inc.), North Central Florida Early Steps, WIC and many more agencies in the community that serve pregnant women and families with young children. This has been a wonderful opportunity for us to work with so many committed, hard-working members of our community who are all focused on ensuring that pregnant women and families with young children have access to the supports and services they need to thrive.
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The Healthy Start Team
President
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Sarah Catalanotto
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Suwannee River Area Health Education Center
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Vice President
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Mary Peoples-Sheps
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Community Representative
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Secretary
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Isadora Del Vecchio
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March of Dimes
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Treasurer
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Amanda Elliott
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SWAG Family Resource Center
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Ingrid Ellis-Schaper
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Early Learning Coalition of the Nature Coast
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Ann-Marie Fenn
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Shands LakeShore OBGYN
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Roseann Fricks
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Early Learning Coalition of Marion County
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Cathy Rehbery
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Shands at LakeShore Hospital
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Rev. Tommy Rodgers
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Bethlehem Baptist Church
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Sharon Surrency
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Partnership for Strong Families
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Cathy Winfrey
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Healthy Families ACUB
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Cassandra Young
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Heart of Florida Health Center
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Coalition Screening Rates
Prematurity Awareness
Legislative Budget Requests
Coalition Updates
MIECHV CI&R Update
The Healthy Start Team
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Greetings!
I hope things are finally returning back to normal for all of our Coalition members and Healthy Start participants after hurricane Irma and the substantial impact she made to the great state of Florida. The Coalition is here to help in whatever way we can. If there is a need, please let us know. We will do everything we can to meet that need or connect you to the resources that can.
Mark your calendars.........
October is Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) Awareness month and November is Prematurity Awareness month. Education and awareness of both SIDS and Prematurity is a crucial part of Healthy Start's mission. In order for us to do better, we must first know better. Will you help us educate and create an awareness for both of these health concerns during their respective months?
On a lighter note, we are only 12 weeks away from Christmas! December 26th will be here before we know it! Have you started your shopping yet? Yep, neither have I! Don't forget that you can use our Amazon Smile link to get all of your Christmas shopping done and for every purchase made, Amazon will donate a percentage to the Coalition.
We will see everyone at our next Board of Directors meeting in December.
Julie Moderie, MPH
Program Director
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Special Service Provider Council Meeting
Tues., Oct. 24th @ 10:00 AM
Fri., Nov. 3rd @ 9:30 AM
WellFlorida Council
Executive Committee
Meeting
Thurs., Nov. 16th @ 2:00 PM
WellFlorida Council
Service Provider Council Meeting
Thurs., Dec. 14th @ 1:00 PM
WellFlorida Council
Board of Directors Meeting
Thurs., Dec. 14th @ 2:00 PM
WellFlorida Council
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