Yale New Haven Hospital – Nurturing Healthy Kids

New Haven, CT
November 2017

Overview
As the leading health care organization in Greater New Haven, Yale New Haven Hospital (YNHH) demonstrates its longtime commitment to families—especially mothers and children—by providing a variety of wide-ranging programs. Working within our diverse urban surroundings, YNHH partners with parents to support healthy children through initiatives both within the hospital and out in the community. These initiatives include:

• Me & My Baby – Provides essential services for uninsured pregnant women and their children to age 5. This program has been in operation since 1989, the only one in the state to continue operation after grant funding ceased in 1994.
• Healthy Start – In conjunction with the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, offers uninsured pregnant women and children to age 2 free medical care. This program has been in operation since 1997.
• Pediatric Dental Center – Provides comprehensive and urgent dental care for children up to age 18. This program has been in operation since 2004.
• Supplemental Infant Program (SIP) – Offers low-income postpartum mothers who are not breastfeeding additional formula beyond that provided by the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) Program. This program has been in operation since 2008.
• School-Based Health Centers – Brings comprehensive medical and mental health services directly into eight area schools. This program has been in operation since 1994.

Impact

• Me & My Baby gave more than 300 uninsured, and mainly undocumented, mothers access to prenatal and pediatric care, health education, care coordination and prescription drug coverage in 2016. During this time, more than 250 enrolled mothers gave birth, a number that decreases annually due to continuing outreach and education efforts.
• Healthy Start has served more than 8,000 infants since 2002, offering free labor, delivery, nursing, medications, counseling and related services, as well as outreach, counseling and case management of clinical care. Healthy Start babies are almost 50 percent more likely to be born at a healthy weight.
• Pediatric Dental Center staff puts particular emphasis on treating children with special dentistry needs, as well as children with severe disabilities, and served more than 15,000 in 2016. The Center was recognized nationally because one-third of its resident physicians go on to public health and education work.
• SIP was born from patient feedback to clinic staff about their need to water down formula to make ends meet. This program ensures that some 400 infants annually at YNHH’s Pediatric Primary Care Center and WIC clinic won’t suffer effects of malnourishment, such as poor weight gain, anemia and failure to thrive.
• School-Based Health Centers saw more than 11,000 student visits 2016. Utilizing nurse practitioners and social workers, the health centers address the reality that parents’ work schedules and family pressures make it difficult to get kids to doctors’ appointments.

Lessons Learned
When we listen to our community and look at the data, we can collaborate on programs to better affect the health of our children. Ideas that started as grant-funded demonstration projects such as Me & My Baby or Healthy Start, or that came from our line staff’s interactions with patients, such as SIP, become a part of how we operate.

Future Goals
While we annually assess the value, in human terms, of our community health care programs, we also recognize the need to continue exploring novel ways to interact with our neighbors, by listening to them and understanding their needs. This is part of Yale New Haven’s 190-year tradition of innovation, and has helped us open doors to programs like those mentioned here. We continue to proactively seek out opportunities to enhance services to our patients, through feedback from our patient advisory councils, clinical interactions at our specialty clinics, and other collaborative means. The goals are, as always, to improve the health of the communities we serve, be it through clinical services or community engagement.

Contact: Kyle Ballou, Esq.
Executive Director
Telephone: 203-688-2503
Email: kyle.ballou@ynhh.org