SUMMARY ABSTRACT
Maternal and child health is critical to achieving the Healthy People 2030 Goals. Investing in integrated
nurturing care interventions from preconception through childhood and adolescence defines one’s
developmental trajectory with benefits that accumulate across the life course and promote social justice (i.e.,
taking equity one step further by fixing the systems for generations to come). COVID-19 pandemic has
disrupted essential nurturing care services such as prenatal, perinatal, and pediatric services. As a result, over
a million preventable child and maternal deaths globally are projected to occur due to extreme poverty and
household food insecurity (HFI; lack of consistent access to enough healthful food for an active, healthy life
due to limited financial resources). Amid the COVID-19, HFI in the US tripled among households with children
(~19.5%), disproportionately burdening marginalized low income and families of color. HFI is strongly linked
with racial/ethnic inequities and adverse maternal-child health and nutrition outcomes. Integrating effective
food security interventions within nurturing care services as a COVID-19 response & recovery efforts is an
achievable strategy to promote equity. The West Las Vegas Promise Neighborhood (WLVPN) is an
intervention addressing social determinants of health to reduce structural racism amid COVID-19 in historically
racial/ethnic marginalized communities in the Southwest US. The WLVPN is implemented by over 50 multi-sector partners in key life domains (health, education, employment, housing, and social justice) coordinated by
Nevada Partners, Inc., with whom we have a solid and long-term collaboration. While WLVPN social
intervention is a unique opportunity and platform to address endemic inequities in maternal-child mortality and
food insecurity levels, it lacks focus on maternal-child health and nutrition. Therefore, our partnership with
Nevada Partners, Inc. is well-placed for promoting the maternal-child component within WLVPN and advancing
implementation and equity research. Our community-based participatory approach will use a racial equity
framework to co-create WITH the community an intervention to integrate maternal-child health and nutrition
consisted of a bundle of effective food security interventions retrieved from the literature (e.g., universal
screening, community referral, monitoring system, and nutrition-focused counseling strategies) adapted and
integrated into the nurturing care services within WLVPN communities. A Hybrid Type III quasi-experimental
within-site will be designed to 1) develop and implement an equity-focused system-level intervention to
integrate maternal-child health and nutrition and 2) assess the effectiveness of this intervention in decreasing
levels of food insecurity and/or improve health outcomes of pregnant women and their young children under
the age of 3, which will nurture their potentials, enabling them to thrive. This project is designed to inform how
best multi-sectoral interventions (maternal-child health and food insecurity interventions) can be integrated to
promote transformation on the maternal-child health and nutrition of historically marginalized communities.
