Thursday, November 21, 2024
11/21/2024
Project Title: Indianapolis Healthy Start Applicant Name: The Health & Hospital Corporation of Marion County Address: 3838 North Rural Street, Indianapolis, IN 46205-2930 Project Director: Tiffany Davis, MPH, MSN, RN Contact Information: 317-221-2347 and TDavis@MarionHealth.org Website: https://marionhealth.org/programs/population-health/maternal-and-child-health/healthy-start/ Total Funds Requested for Year 1: $983,705 Total 5-Year Funding Request: $5,210,062 The goal of Indianapolis Healthy Start (IHS) is to reduce perinatal health disparities, improve low birth weight, infant survival rates, and birth outcomes in Marion County, Indiana. The purpose of the proposed project is to implement essential Healthy Start program activities needed to achieve four core elements of the Healthy Start model: (1) improve women’s health; (2) improve families health and wellness, including access to healthcare services for women; (3) assure impact and effectiveness by improving prenatal and postpartum maternal health focused on breastfeeding, immunizations, safe sleep, family planning, smoking cessation, and fetal alcohol spectrum disorders; and (4) promote systems change. Additionally, Indianapolis Healthy Start will rely on partnerships established through the Community Consortium Action Network (C-CAN) to develop a coordinated effort to increase access to mental and behavioral health services for women, children, and families. IHS will increase community activities to support integrated services for mental and behavioral health. Members of the C-CAN will ensure coordinated services focus on promoting the integration of general and behavioral health services. Other priority areas include increasing father/partner involvement, improving parenting education, increasing the number of women seeking prenatal care in their first trimester of pregnancy, encouraging postpartum visits and interconception planning, and implementing perinatal depression screeni ng for all IHS participants. Indianapolis has a long history of elevated infant mortality rate (IMR) at 6.75 infant deaths per 1,000 live births) in 2021, compared to 5.87 infant deaths per 1,000 live births for the U.S. When stratifying by race and ethnicity, IMRs for Marion County infants were between 109-144% higher for all race and ethnicity categories than U.S. infants. Marion County, which closely matches the geographical boundaries of the city of Indianapolis, ranks 75th of 92 Indiana counties for its overall health outcomes. The project’s service area is a subset of the city of Indianapolis (population 2 million). It comprises 11 of the county’s 48 ZIP codes, an urban area with a population density of 2,280 people per square mile. The IHS project area has greater minority representation (45% white, non- Hispanic compared to 60% for all Marion County), more children (55% families with related children compared to 52%), more families living in or near poverty (28% at or below 125% FPL compared to 21%), and fewer families with a permanent full-time worker (50% compared to 52%) than the rest of Marion County. Indianapolis Healthy Start seeks funding to address a broad array of factors that cause inequities in birth outcomes to reduce maternal and infant health disparities in central Indiana.
HHS’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website provides access to detailed descriptions of grants, loans, aggregated direct payments and other types of financial assistance awarded by the HHS Operating Divisions (OPDIVs) and the Office of the Secretary Staff Divisions (STAFFDIVs).
