St. Joseph Mercy, Oakland
Pontiac, Mich.

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St. Joseph Mercy – Oakland serves an area with high levels of poverty, unemployment and a lack of health insurance. The hospital serves all who need health care regardless of their ability to pay, and reaches out through its community programs, including the Healthy Start/Healthy Families program, providing in-home parenting education and support to vulnerable families.

While its primary goal is preventing chronic health problems in an at-risk population through intensive, early intervention in pregnancies, the program also enhances family cohesiveness, helps eliminate child abuse and neglect, and gives children a healthy start on life.

Through its collaborative home visiting program — undertaken along with the Oakland Livingston Human Services Agency and the Oakland County Public Health Division, among others — the hospital addresses health disparities that confront high-risk, pregnant Pontiac-area African-American women in a community where the infant death rate among African-Americans is alarming — 23 deaths per 1,000 live births. The goal is to reduce the disparities for pregnant at-risk African-American women to ensure full-term healthy birth outcomes and lay the foundation for a healthy adulthood for the enrolled children.

Criteria used to identify at-risk families include teen pregnancy, unemployment, low income, late prenatal care, limited support system, or history of mental health issues/substance abuse. Families meeting one or more of the at-risk criteria are assessed in their homes by a Family Assessment Specialist using the Kempe Stress Checklist.

Families scoring 25 and above on the assessment are offered home visiting services so that they can benefit from the in-home education and support provided by a Healthy Start Family Support Specialist. Home visits occur weekly for the first three to six months and can progress to every other week. Visits focus on infant care, child growth and development, bonding, parental self-care and couple communications. Through the visits, families learn about the importance of getting their children immunized and finding a medical home for their babies. The home visitor also helps the family in setting and tracking personal and family goals, such as getting a job, going to school, improving a particular living situation, or finding needed transportation.

Only five percent (nine of 169) babies born to participating African-American women during the program's first three years were preterm or low birth-weight, and participants overwhelmingly tended to have healthier pregnancies and learned how to care for their babies and foster their child's development.

Additionally, 100 percent of the babies born to participating families received appropriate immunizations, compared to 75-80 percent of babies across Michigan who. Furthermore, 100 percent of participating babies were screened for developmental delay, and those who were found to have developmental delay were enrolled in appropriate pre-K educational programming.

St. Joseph Mercy – Oakland is part of Trinity Health.