Healthy start initiative-eliminating racial/ethnic disparities - the purpose of this project, "supporting healthy families in the mississippi delta," is to 1) improve maternal and infant health…

Healthy start initiative-eliminating racial/ethnic disparities - the purpose of this project, "supporting healthy families in the mississippi delta," is to 1) improve maternal and infant health outcomes; 2) provide additional support to pregnant and new families through the facilitation of a) health education and b) supporting services; 3) launch a community consortium with aims to increase collaboration and resources throughout washington, bolivar, sunflower, holmes, leflore, coahoma, humphreys, sharkey, issaquena, and yazoo counties, mississippi in order to mitigate social determinants of health. Plan a health currently operates a free mobile health clinic and a free-standing health clinic; funding through the health start initiative will allow US to expand our service offerings to meet the needs of our target area through our novel telehealth collaboration model that allows our clinic staff to assist specialty providers in real-time, providing quality care to individuals who previously would have had to travel several hours. Our clinic staff are also trained to identify and reduce social determinants of health during the intake process, a process that will be supported formally through the community consortium, ensuring individualized case management and follow-up for HS participants. The consortium will also help to further our efforts to provide educational classes and distribute needed resources within our community. With the support of hrsa and the collaborative efforts of the community consortium, we are excited to be able to fulfill our commitment to the members of the delta community-individually meet the needs of families in our target area, improving access to health services, resources, and address social determinants of health that contribute to poor maternal and infant health outcomes.