Michael Griffin, PhD, MHSA President and CEO 3201 S. Carrollton Ave. New Orleans, LA 70178-4148 www.depaulcommunityhealthcenters.org (504) 207-3060; mgriffin@dcsno.org DePaul Community Health Centers (DCHC) proposes to develop the DePaul Infant Equity Education Project (DIEEP) to support and coordinate community activities to reduce the infant mortality rate (IMR) among non-Hispanic Blacks in Orleans Parish. According to the Louisiana Department of Health, the 2017-2019 IMR for non-Hispanic blacks was 10.3/1,000. DIEEP aims to reduce IMR among the target population to 5/1,000, consistent with the Healthy People 2030 goal. The DIEEP coalition is composed of like-minded agencies in the New Orleans Metropolitan, the Louisiana Maternal Child Health Program, and partners from other sectors including housing, tourism, education and childcare. DIEEP will build upon existing collaborations of the Crescent City Family Services Health Services Community Action Network (CAN), the New Orleans Health Department's Healthy Start CAN, the recently developed local coalition of the Alliance for Innovation on Maternal Health Community Care Initiative (AIM-CCI); and the March of Dimes' (MOD) Igniting Change Campaign. DIEEP proposes to address two of the five domains of the Healthy People 2030 social determinants of health (SDOH) including economic stability and health care access and quality. Based upon the social ecological model of change theory, DIEEP will implement project activities at the policy, community, institutional, interpersonal and individual levels. Through four working groups (Policy, Equity, Health Care Access and Quality, and Economic Stability). Activities will be implemented directly by DCHC and through contracting with major community partners. The Policy Working Group, led by MOD will work on extending the Louisiana Medicaid expansion, extending the federal child tax credit program, and increasing the minimum wage. The E
quity Working Group, led by Crescent City Family Services Healthy Start, will design and implement a training curriculum for dismantling structural racism in healthcare and housing, will promoting equity strategies in all DIEEP activities and will host trainings and provide technical support to expand best practices in health equity. The Economic Stability Working Group, led by TrainingGround, Inc., will coordinate the constellation of the social support agencies that provide SDOH services to pregnant and parenting families to improve quality and efficiencies in services and track service utilization. The Access to Care and Quality Working Group, coordinated by DCHC, will launch a targeted multimedia campaign to promote early entry into prenatal care and extended postpartum visits, will work with the perinatal provider community to expand universal high risk prenatal-postpartum screening; and adopt the AIM-CCI postpartum safety bundles. DCHC will also work with area high schools to provide a pregnancy prevention education program. DIEEP program outcomes will include increased utilization of early child care services, higher participation rates in parenting classes, lower percentages in parenting families who report housing and food insecurity, higher percentages of non-Hispanic Blacks who initiate prenatal care in the first trimester, a decrease in the non-hispanic Black teen pregnancy rate, and increased community perinatal providers who adopt universal high risk perinatal screening and the postpartum safety bundles.