Baltimore Community Foundation Supports B’more for Healthy Babies with $40,000 Funding Match
Matching Funds Will Further Extend Care Coordination for Healthy Babies and Maternal Health Care Via Pritzker Children’s Initiative
The Baltimore City Health Department (BCHD), Family League of Baltimore, HealthCare Access Maryland (HCAM), and the Baltimore Civic Fund are proud to announce that the Baltimore Community Foundation is investing $40,000 in matching funds to support work through the Pritzker Children’s Initiative (PCI). In 2020, PCI awarded the B’more for Healthy Babies (BHB) initiative with a three-year grant to BCHD of $425,000. The investment increases access to high quality services for pregnant women and young children in low-income families in Baltimore City by making systems improvements. As part of the grant, BHB is required to secure matching funds – and is thrilled that the Baltimore Community Foundation is part of the effort to build a world-class system of care coordination and services to ensure that Baltimore’s babies are healthy, safe, and ready for school. The Baltimore Civic Fund will serve as a fiscal sponsor for the matching funds.
BHB is Baltimore City’s strategy to prevent infant mortality and improve maternal and child health outcomes. Since its launch in 2009, Baltimore City has seen a decrease in infant mortality of 35 percent, with a 53 percent decrease in the Black-white disparity in infant mortality. BHB’s collective efforts have also led to a 55 percent decrease in teen births with a 76 percent decrease in the Black-white disparity, and a 44 percent reduction in sleep-related infant deaths.
With the support of PCI, BHB has been intensifying the work to build a robust infrastructure for community and provider outreach that funnels low-income families to services and by advocating for policy change to ensure families receive referrals. The matching funds BHB seeks to raise will be used to support specific projects that will augment the care coordination and referral systems work supported by PCI.
The following projects will serve to maintain BHB’s strong provider relationships with strategic provider outreach, with the goal of securing and strengthening connection to care for families in provider offices and communities long term.
Pediatric Detailing Physician Consultant. With the support of a physician consultant, the BHB team systematically reaches out to and details pediatric providers across Baltimore City in order to increase referrals into WIC, Baltimore Infants and Toddlers Program, and BHB’s centralized intake system for care coordination. The physician consultant will outreach city pediatric clinics to build relationships, educate staff on the benefits of connecting families to supportive services, and provide technical assistance to set up and troubleshoot clinic referral workflows.
Preventive Medicine Residents to Support Postpartum Infant & Maternal Referral (PIMR) and Prenatal Risk Assessment (PRA) Outreach. BHB has partnered with Johns Hopkins Preventive Medicine Residents (PMRs) to provide three-month rotations for physician residents who undertake special projects for BHB. The PMRs will work with the BHB team to augment our provider outreach efforts, connecting physician-to-physician with those who have been under-submitting PRAs or PIMRs. This supplemental and specific outreach to providers will increase the number of mothers and infants care coordinated by 500 people, helping to close the gap between Medicaid births and care coordination.
Consultant to Develop an Action Plan for Mandating the PIMR in Maryland. With the support of a consultant experienced with Medicaid, BHB will develop an action plan for effective public and administrative policy with the Maryland Department of Health (MDH) and its Medicaid division. Although the PRA is mandated by Maryland Medicaid, the PIMR is not. As a result, mothers and infants facing significant social and medical challenges slip through cracks in the system. To remedy this, the consultant will work with BHB to conduct research on how to implement effective public and administrative policy with MDH and its Medicaid division. The outcome of the consultant’s work will be an actionable plan that BHB leadership will use to increase accountability and improve connection to care for new moms and infants via the PIMR.
Communications Campaign Implementation for Centralized Intake. With technical assistance offered by PCI, BHB will work with the BUILD Initiative on formative work to support a branding campaign for the BHB centralized intake system. The BHB centralized intake system is the backbone of BHB’s work, providing families with a single point of entry for connection to supportive services, including home visiting, Early Head Start, WIC, early intervention, behavioral health treatment, and domestic violence resources. Once the initial work with BUILD has been completed, BHB seeks to implement a communications campaign in order to disseminate messaging strategically throughout the City, empowering mothers and families to access the centralized intake system directly without a referral from a provider or community organization.
Judy Center Community Health Advocate Expansion. BHB has been able to extend the “community hubs” model to the Judy Center network, embedding full-time community health advocates in Judy Centers. Health advocates work in partnership with Judy Center staff to identify pregnant women and infants in the neighborhood and engage them in the centralized intake system, Judy Center services, and developmental and social-emotional screening. We have piloted this collaborative model at five Judy Centers, strategically selected based on neighborhoods with a high rate of “unable to locate” families, and would like to expand this model to other high-need neighborhoods. BHB anticipates a new CHA would have similar success to our current health advocates embedded in the Judy Centers, referring at least 200 families annually with a 90 percent success rate locating clients and a 47 percent success rate in linkage to home visiting programs.
For further information, please contact Phil Smith, Partnership Manager, Baltimore Civic Fund at philip@baltimorecivicfund.org.