Maryland Expands Its Maternal & Child Home Visiting Program

By OPEN MINDS Circle

On September 1, 2022, the Maryland Department of Health (MDH) announced it selected four organizations to expand the reach of the state’s maternal and child home visiting program. The organizations will split $865,622 in grant funding during year one of a three-year expansion. Over the three-year contract term, the grants total $2.26 million. The contracts run from August 15, 2022 through June 30, 2025.

Home visiting is a voluntary family support program driven by referrals from providers, hospitals, local health departments and community-based organizations. The program promotes infant and child health, fosters educational development and school readiness, and helps prevent child abuse and neglect. Home visits by trained professionals provide families with parenting information, resources and support from the time of pregnancy through a child’s first two to five years of life. Participants receive in-home education, case management, and referrals to services based on their individualized needs, including prenatal care access, well-baby checkups, postpartum support, safe sleep training, child injury prevention, and early language and literacy skill development.

The state’s previous home visiting program served eligible high-risk pregnant individuals and children up to age two. The program sought to increase use of prenatal and postpartum care, child vaccination rates, and well-child visits. Expanding its home visiting programs is part of the state’s efforts to address disparities that impact maternal and child health, particularly in at-risk communities.

The grantees were selected to serve high priority areas with worse than average maternal outcomes, including Baltimore City, Anne Arundel, Montgomery, and Washington counties. They are as follows:

• Baltimore City: The Family Tree will expand home visiting services in Baltimore City through the Parents as Teachers (PAT) model. Home visitors make regular visits from prenatal through kindergarten age. The PAT curriculum focuses on mental health, nutrition, maternal depression, drug use, and domestic violence.
• Anne Arundel County: Baltimore Healthy Start (BHS) is partnering with Chase Braxton Glen Burnie Health Center to expand home visiting services to postpartum women in Anne Arundel County. The program will use the Great Kids curriculum, designed for home visits beginning in the gestational stage of pregnancy. Families are offered standard BHS case management and care coordination services through the Chase Brexton-based Medication Assisted Treatment for Substance Use Disorder program.
• Montgomery County: The Montgomery County Health Department will expand the Babies Born Healthy (BBH) program using the March of Dimes “Becoming a Mom” (BAM) curriculum. BAM improves maternal knowledge through a community-based collaborative model of care, prenatal education, and quality prenatal care. BBH will serve high-risk pregnant people beginning at any stage in their pregnancy and follow the mother and infant until the child turns six months of age.
• Washington County: The Washington County Health Department will expand its existing home visiting services through the local program affiliate of Healthy Families America. The program offers services to families starting prenatally and continues through the child’s fifth birthday.

Funding for the expansion is from the Maryland Health Services Cost Review Commission (HSCRC) to support its Statewide Integrated Health Improvement Strategy (SIHIS). The SIHIS is a coordinated public-private initiative to improve health, reduce disparities, and transform health care delivery under Maryland’s Total Cost of Care Model. In December 2020, HSCRC designated maternal and child health as its third and final population health priority for the SIHIS.

For more information, contact: Chase Cook, Deputy Director of Communications, Maryland Department of Health, 201 West Preston Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21201-2399; 410-767-8649; Email: chase.cook@maryland.gov; Website: https://health.maryland.gov/pages/index.aspx