Back when I was pregnant with my first child,
I had to do things on my own in regards
to setting up an appointment for myself
and signing up for Medicaid myself.
It would have been a big relief for me
if I knew that Healthy Start exists.
Healthy Start is a maternal child health program.
We do home visiting and provide education
to women of childbearing age,
basically trying to influence
negative birth outcomes
that can happen from lack of prenatal care.
We get people connected to OB-GYNs
and prenatal care, education, resource
and everything they need to have a healthy pregnancy.
A lot of Marshallese
that I work with wouldn't really seek
and get the help that they need
because of language barrier.
There's a lot of access to translators,
but they're either over the phone
or they're a medical assistant
that has a full time job.
And so that's a large part of my job,
is making sure they can go
well-equipped to their next appointment.
A lot of the women, it's
not that they don't want healthy pregnancy,
but there's a lot of other things
happening in their lives
that are prioritized right then
and being able to help address
those social determinants
type of issues makes a big difference
and gives them the space
to breathe and say, okay,
now I can worry about a doctor's appointment
and making sure that I'm doing
what the doctor says.
What I really like about this job is
building trust, relationships, baby's health
and mom's health is very important to me.
The ones that have been in this program for a long time,
they say that this program
is life changing for them.
I am so proud of the work
we're doing to keep birthing persons
and babies healthy.
Thank you, CDC, for supporting our work.
Together, we're improving health
outcomes for the community.