Having social workers available to students at Delta schools mean, among many benefits, having someone available to students who needs help. Our social workers never know what to expect on any given day. Several weeks ago, a student approached our social worker out of fear and concern. She was pregnant and a victim of incest and was ready to drop out of school. She had nowhere to turn; she had not seen her mother in years and was staying with her father in an abusive situation. The social worker began to counsel with the student, helped resolve the living arrangements, got pre-natal care for the mother, and tutoring to help with school. The social worker enrolled the student in our home mentoring program, which has given the student the confidence needed to stay in school and engage in the kind of personal care that will help both her and her baby. We have found that so very often, students have no where to turn in crises like this and, as a result, tend to make...
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Posted in Blog, Karen Fox, PhD
This is a recent example of how our “Home Mentoring” program is working. One of our partcipants is a local college student. Not wanting to drop out after her baby was born, she switched to night classes at MVSU so she could take care of her baby during the day. Our staffer was then able to pair her with another participant, also attending MVSU, who had a baby needing care. So, the two moms now help each other. One attends school during the day, the other at night; they care for each other’s baby when they are not in school. Having a trained case work on the ground, working with individual moms, helps resolve situations like this.
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Posted in Blog, Karen Fox, PhD
We know that a significant portion of premature births come from teen pregnancies. We also know that one of the best ways to give an infant a good nutritional start in life is to breastfeed. A teen mom in the last trimester of her pregnancy signed up for our home visitation program. Our social worker feared a premature birth (because the mom had not had received effective prenatal care prior to our visits). During the visitation program, the teen mom decided she wanted to breastfeed her baby. We have been able to support her decision by providing breastfeeding classes and helping her work with a lactation specialist. In spite of her baby girl being born prematurely, she is a very resilient mother, is breastfeeding on schedule, and her baby made such good progress that the doctors expect to discharge her much earlier than expected. Throughout all of this, the mother has been able to pump 8 -12 bottles per day. This is just one of many examples how one-on-one...
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Posted in Blog, Karen Fox, PhD
We talked last week about how the Delta Health Alliance home visitation program helps reduce teen pregnancy, infant mortality and premature births. But it is much more than that. One of the moms in the program, for example, just received her high school diploma! After dropping out of high school because of her pregnancy, and then faced with the prospect of raising her child alone, she had no parental role models in her life. The DHA outreach worker was her only source of support. She encouraged her to sign back up at school, and the home visits were planned around her school schedule. Not giving up was the focus of their work together. We all celebrated this accomplishment by attending her graduation ceremony and with a special lunch with some of the other home visit moms in the area. There is no question that this kind of one-on-one counseling and personal support is expensive and takes time, but there is also no question that it works.
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Posted in Blog, Karen Fox, PhD
Part three of my three-part post on addressing teenage pregnancy in Mississippi. Even though the programs run by Delta Health Alliance are labor intensive and take time, they are producing results. Research shows us that all of the staff resources we put into early childhood and parent education, pays back exponentially. Here’s why: teen mothers are more likely to have premature births and are more likely to have infants die before their first birthday. Premature births are the leading cause of infant mortality. Premature births are also very costly: an average $58,315 compared to $3,966 for a normal birth. That’s a difference of $54,349 per child. Delta Health Alliance programs have to date sustained a 13.8 % decrease in premature births in the three Delta counties in which we operate this particular program. That figure not only represents a huge monetary savings, but means infants are heathier.
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Posted in Blog, Karen Fox, PhD
This is part two of a series of posts on teenage pregnancy, a major priority of the current Governor. Through experience with a variety of initiatives, Delta Health Alliance has concluded that mother-to-mother home visit programs to mentor women-at-risk and pregnant women and families with young children up to three years of age in their home to promote healthy living and self-sufficiency is the most effective way to both reduce teenage pregnancy and reduce infant mortality. Local women in our programs are used as primary staff to listen to the concerns of mothers, educate them about nutrition, health and child development, model positive parenting practices, and provide links to medical and social services. The Delta Health Alliance’s home visitation program has been implemented in three Delta counties: LeFlore, Sunflower and Washington. These three counties has birth outcomes that looked like the typical delta county prior to these home visitations beginning. However, since the...
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Posted in Blog, Karen Fox, PhD
I want to commend Gov. Phil Bryant for making a priority the issue of teenage pregnancy. Mississippi has the highest teen birth rate and one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the United States. The large majority of these teen births (83.5%) are unintended. Teen pregnancy should be avoided for a number of reasons. Teen mothers are less likely to complete high school; only one-third receive a high school diploma. The children of teen mothers have lower birth weights, are more likely to perform poorly in school, and are at a greater risk of abuse and neglect, and sons of teen mothers are 13% more likely to end up in prison, while teen daughters are 22% more likely to become teen mothers themselves. These factors translate to reduced education opportunity, higher health care costs, and challenges to economic development. One estimate of the 7,078 teen births in 2009 in Mississippi cost taxpayers $154,895,580. These are all reasons why reducing teenage pregnancy...
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Posted in Blog, Karen Fox, PhD
- Before you go to the grocery store: plan out your family meals for the week and write down each meal and what you need at the grocery store.
- Add what else you need to your shopping list ( bag of flour, fruit, etc)
- Then go to the store
- Try not to buy anything that is not on your list!
- Also, make a commitment to NOT go through a drive though in a fast food place for 7 days in a row
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Posted in Blog, Jay Cohen, MD
