Category: Press Clips

A city program provides free, at-home medical visits to new parents.

After Kristen Nuyen gave birth to her son in September, she received a free, at-home medical visit through Family Connects, a Chicago Department of Public Health program that partners with participating hospitals around the city. Nuyen expected the standard, postpartum visit to take half an hour. Instead, the nurse spent more than three hours in her home—but not due to any emergency or medical issue.

“Instead of me being on the exam table, we were sitting on my couch, so it was very conversational, and I had the baby with me,” Nuyen tells the Reader. “It felt more relaxed, like I was talking to a friend—a friend who just happens to know everything.”

Nuyen’s experience stands in stark contrast with the current trend in medical visits, which, according to a 2018 study, average fewer than 20 minutes for an appointment. This extra time spent with patients is especially important for those in the postpartum period—usually lasting for six to eight weeks following childbirth—during which time the newborn and birthing parent are at the highest risk of health complications and require close monitoring.

According to a 2023 Illinois Department of Public Health report, pregnancy-related deaths in the state climbed from 88 to 110 between 2018 and 2020. The highest concentration of these deaths occurred in Chicago and the surrounding suburbs, and rates of postpartum morbidity and mortality are twice as high for Black birthing parents. The study identified the strongest predicting factors to be inadequate access to prenatal and postpartum care, and estimated that 91 percent of postpartum deaths are entirely preventable.

“Every birthing parent, [every] adoptive parent should at least have one nursing visit at home within the first three weeks,” says Janae Rhodes, nurse supervisor at the University of Chicago Medicine’s partner program with Family Connects. “There’s so many unknowns and adjustments involved during this period.”

Nuyen’s experience with her Family Connects nurse made her feel more prepared to respond to any unexpected issues that could come up. “We don’t have a lot of family in the city, and the nurse asked, ‘If there was an emergency in the city, what would you do?’” Nuyen says. “They gave me the contact information of an emergency nurse, and if something were to come up, they told me to call at any time.”

Nurses in the program are also instructed to walk parents through the postpartum warning signs—symptoms like fever, trouble breathing, dizziness, and severe headache—and encourage patients to schedule follow-up appointments with their doctor.

For Nuyen, her experience with Family Connects began long before she was pregnant. She’s worked at EverThrive Illinois—a reproductive justice nonprofit that works closely as a partner organization with Family Connects—for more than eight years. There, Nuyen leads two community alignment boards, or community-based organizations, in Chicago’s south side, which work in tandem with Family Connects nurses to ensure clients are covered regardless of their needs.

Although Family Connects currently provides one at-home visit, nurses work with families to create a plan for continued care through doctors and other medical support. “They will sit with the person while they call the doctor’s office to schedule your postpartum check up,” Nuyen says. “We can see from the data that 95 percent of people who participate in the program will go on to have their visit, which is much higher than what we see generally.”

The program uses a referral system to act as a liaison for parents, providing families with information and connecting them to medical support and material resources like diapers, which are not covered by food assistance programs like WIC in Illinois.

After working in the maternal and child health field for years, Nuyen was surprised when the Family Connects nurse informed her of resources that she didn’t realize were available. “They had a lactation consultant who was on demand and available, and I called that consultant like once a week for months after that visit,” Nuyen said.

Clients can also use the program to access other types of support, ranging from affordable housing referrals to guidance navigating resources for mental health, transportation assistance, and childcare.

“You would think some of these things are easy to find within the community,” Rhodes says. “But a lot of these resources aren’t easy to find—even through Google.”

Family Connects is also available for parents who suffer from perinatal loss and seeks to address the needs of families using a holistic approach.

“Sometimes it’s about consoling and supporting what they might be experiencing emotionally,” Rhodes says.

On February 2nd, FCI’s Acting CEO, Jenny Jensen, presented with Family Connects Frederick County (Maryland) at the National Home Visiting Summit held in Washington, DC. Their presentation “Redesigning Postpartum Health Care to Include Universal Nurse Home Visits” highlighted the postpartum experience and innovative health care. FC Frederick County has been a certified partner since 2023 and you can learn more about their work at https://www.frederickhealth.org/…/nurse-visit-at-home

Pictured: Family Connects Union County Director of Women’s Services, Alison Stone, and Family Connects Home Visitor, Heidi Klappenbach (Source: https://www.arcf.org/give-smart-blog/following-baby-back-home/)

“They don’t really feel like just nurses coming out to your house,” Rosson said. “The way they speak is more encouraging, and they just make sure you’re OK,” Family Connects Union County participant Hannah Rosson shared in a recent story that ran in both the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and the El Dorado Times “Program in south Arkansas provides free nurse visits to mothers with newborns.”

Family Connects Union County, located in El Dorado, Arkansas, is a certified Family Connects partner and nurses have been providing visits in their community since 2019. Arkansas state house Representative Julie Mayberry introduced HB 1103 in 2023, which directs the state Department of Health to establish a universal newborn home nurse visitation program and required health plans to cover the services offered by the program.

Read the full story here: https://www.eldoradonews.com/news/2023/dec/27/program-in-south-arkansas-provides-free-nurse/

Learn more about Family Connects Union County: https://www.arhomevisiting.org/modelname/fcuc/

FC New Orleans had their launch event on August 1, 2023! They held a press conference at the Greater New Orleans Foundation and invited New Orleans Mayor Latoya Cantrell and District B council member, Lesli Harris to share their excitement with the Family Connects program.

Link to article online: https://www.nola.com/news/new-orleans-families-with-newborns-will-receive-free-at-home-visits-through-new-city-program/article_4c6fffb6-3149-11ee-8277-332fd5caf0f3.html

 

*Click on the images for larger versions. 

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The SXSW PanelPicker is a two-step online process that gives our attendees a significant voice in Conference programming (presentations, panels, workshops, etc.) for SXSW and SXSW EDU. FCI is listed under SXSW EDU for 2024.

SXSW is March 4-7 in Austin, Texas. Read more about the PanelPicker process here.
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Family Connects International is being recognized by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and AIM (Alliance for Innovation on Maternal Health) for safe postpartum transitions to home! FCI was recognized as a change leader that: Utilize perinatal navigators, case managers, social workers, and postpartum home visiting programs where available to liaise with community resources and to ensure referral loops get closed.

Click here to download the Postpartum Discharge Transition Change Package (PDF).

Note: FCI is recognized on page 18 of the PDF.

 

 

 

 

BY SOPHIE KASAKOVE | Staff writer Aug 2, 2023

 

Families with newborns in New Orleans will have access to free at-home nurse visits beginning this fall, as the city works to address the persistent health challenges facing mothers and babies.

The program, a partnership between the city’s health department, Ochsner Baptist, and Touro Infirmary, will provide up to three in-home visits for infants born at the two hospitals. The check-ins will occur during the first 12 weeks of a baby’s life.

By working with the two Uptown hospitals, the program — called Family Connects New Orleans — will serve the majority of children born in the city. In 2020, 70% of infants were born at those facilities, according to the health department.

“Maternal and child health is one of the leading indicators of the overall health of a community,” Mayor LaToya Cantrell said in a statement. “In order for our city to thrive, we must continue to prioritize care and services for mothers and children. When they are safe, healthy, supported, and given proper resources to grow and learn, our communities succeed socially and economically.”

Before leaving the hospital, families will be scheduled for an initial home visit. Each visit will include health screenings for the mother and baby, as well as a family assessment for “environmental, behavioral, and social needs.”

The program will cost $1.5 million a year and is being paid for by the city with federal American Rescue Plan funds. It is currently slated to run for three years, but Mayor LaToya Cantrell said Wednesday that she hopes it will continue well beyond that.

New Orleans is one of about 40 cities nationwide to adopt the Family Connects model, pioneered by the nonprofit Family Connects International.

 

Maternal health challenges

Louisiana has long struggled with high rates of maternal and infant mortality and remains stuck near the top of nationwide rankings.

Touro Infirmary, for one, was highlighted in 2019 for its unusually high rates of severe childbirth complications, which USA Today found to be higher than any other New Orleans hospital. At the time, hospital officials said they objected to the article’s use of billing data to look at rates of complications and failed to account for different rates of health vulnerabilities of patients between hospitals.

Hospital representatives did not respond Wednesday to a request for comment.

Most pregnancy-associated deaths in the state occur in the first six weeks after birth and the majority are preventable, city health officials say.

A recent study found that accidental overdoses and heart conditions ranked near the top of the list for causes of death of pregnant women in Louisiana.

The infant mortality rate also exceeded the national average in New Orleans between 2017 and 2019, with significantly higher rates among Black babies, according to the Louisiana Perinatal Mortality Review Committee report.

Dr. Jennifer Avegno, the city’s health director, recently appeared on “60 Minutes” to discuss the additional challenges to maternal health posed by recently enacted abortion bans. The new restrictions have led some Louisiana health care providers to fear that treatments for problematic pregnancies or miscarriages could be viewed as providing illegal abortions.

The new program will give the city a way to connect families with other services, said Cantrell.

“It allows us to build trust, get into that home and also triage any other issues… that may be happening in the home,” she said.

 

Original article: https://www.nola.com/news/new-orleans-families-with-newborns-will-receive-free-at-home-visits-through-new-city-program/article_4c6fffb6-3149-11ee-8277-332fd5caf0f3.html