The Importance of Healthy Start Programs:
A child's first few years are crucial in shaping their future health, development, and well-being. For many families, ensuring a healthy start can be challenging due to various social, economic, and environmental factors. This is where Healthy Start Programs come into play, providing essential resources and support to mothers, infants, and families in need. In the Southeastern region, Healthy Start Programs are implemented in Cumberland and Hoke counties—Southeastern NC Healthy Start Programs (SENCHS). The program's goals are to reduce disparities in infant mortality and adverse perinatal outcomes, with a specific emphasis on addressing social determinants of health to improve disparities in maternal and infant health outcomes.
Healthy Start Perinatal Stages
1. Preconception: This stage focuses on preparing for a healthy pregnancy by addressing factors that can affect the health of both the birthing person and the baby.
2. Prenatal (during pregnancy): This stage encompasses the period from conception to delivery, usually lasting about 40 weeks, and is marked by substantial physical and emotional changes.
3. Postpartum (postnatal): This period starts immediately after childbirth and lasts until the child is 18 months old, emphasizing recovery and the transition to parenthood.
4. Interconception: The interconception period refers to the time between the conclusion of one pregnancy and the onset of the next. This period is crucial for enhancing both maternal and infant health outcomes.
What is the Cumberland County Healthy Start Programs?
The Cumberland County Healthy Start Program is a community-based initiative aimed at improving maternal and infant health outcomes, particularly in our underserved and high-risk populations. This program provides services that focus on preventing preterm births, reducing infant mortality, and improving overall maternal health. The initiative is tailored to the unique needs of our community, and the core services generally include:
- Prenatal Care Education: Ensuring that expectant mothers have access to essential prenatal care, guidance on proper nutrition, and information on how to monitor their health during pregnancy.
- Postpartum Support: Assistance is available after childbirth to help new mothers recover, address mental health challenges (such as postpartum depression), and ensure proper baby care practices.
- Home Visits: Healthcare professionals visit mothers and babies at home to provide personalized care and education, ensuring that medical advice is implemented in a real-world setting.
- Access to Healthcare Services: Connecting families with healthcare providers for routine check-ups, screenings, vaccinations, and other essential health services.
- Social Support: Connecting families to social services that offer additional support, such as housing, food assistance, and childcare, to ensure the well-being of families goes beyond just healthcare.
- Father Support and Education: Deliver evidence-based, father-focused parenting curriculum and workshops as one-on-one services or groups. Assist clients in addressing their specific parenting issues and develop a care or action plan/goal setting with the client and CHWs.
Program Benefits
The two goals of SENCHS activities are (1) to enhance women's health during the preconception, prenatal, and interconception periods by offering case management and care coordination, home visiting, health promotion, education, and support services to women, children, and families for up to 18 months after birth, and (2) to improve birth outcomes and the health of infants for up to 18 months after birth.
Participants benefit from perinatal support through improved birth outcomes, chronic disease management, pregnancy spacing, early prenatal care, infant health, postpartum follow-up, contraception literacy and access to family planning care, support for lifestyle modifications, mental health support, and education.
Other participant benefits include:
- Case management and care coordination
- Screenings and assessments
- Support for health insurance enrollment
- Education sessions (i.e. prepared childbirth, breastfeeding & nutrition, safe sleep, etc.)
- Support groups
- Reproductive Life Planning skills
- Support in identifying child care
- Fatherhood/parenting support
- Transportation support for access to perinatal cae
- Mental health referrals
- Baby Bucks –to Health Department Baby Store
- Incentive items for reaching milestones (i.e. gift cards, baby items, etc.)
Community Consortium
The Southeastern NC Healthy Start Programs (SENCHS) Community Consortium is a collective of partners from various health, human, and related organizations, including Healthy Start program participants and individuals of reproductive age. Community members and agency representatives convene regularly to discuss and address issues affecting their community, such as birth outcomes, access to perinatal healthcare, and infant mortality. The group seeks to advance policy and advocacy efforts in perinatal health.
Individuals with Lived Experience within the perinatal spectrum are encouraged to attend the quarterly meeting and share their valuable perspectives in a safe and nurturing environment. This personal involvement also provides participants with access to peer support and incorporates their feedback into discussions about perinatal healthcare. Lived Experience participants are also incentivized to participate through Baby Bucks for the Health Department’s Baby Store, gift cards, swag, and more.
The Healthy Start Community Consortium comprises Healthy Start Programs in the Southeastern NC region, specifically Cumberland and Hoke counties. The group convenes quarterly during the Cumberland Perinatal Task Force meetings.
For more information, please email us here 