September 23, 2016
Infant Mortality Awareness Month Workshop: Every Baby Deserves a Healthy Start
A big big thank you!
We would like to thank everyone that took the time to attend our annual Infant Mortality Awareness Month workshop. As mentioned by our CEO, Cynthia Dean, the primary purpose of this Infant Mortality Awareness Workshop is to bring together an exciting combination of expertise to promote information sharing among providers & community networks. It is a workshop like this where we are able to learn from other expertise in ways to improve the health of the families & to reduce the infant mortality rate in our communities.
This workshop bought together a group of people coming from diverse backgrounds such as, Healthy Start clients, MBRC volunteers, families, nurses, doctors, local health department staff, non-profit organizations, and Maternal Child and Family Health programs. Everyone came together to share their knowledge, stories, successes with their program or work, lessons learned, etc. We greatly appreciate the information shared and the networking occurred among the attendees, potential future partnerships, which is why this workshop is held every year–these partnerships & resources are creating lasting imprints that will improve the lives of the children & families.
Healthy Start’s mission is reducing the infant mortality rates in its community, and to be involved in a work like this; the work wouldn’t happen without the continuing education & support from our partners. We had wonderful exhibitors; Catholic Charities, Missouri Delta medical Center, Empower Missouri, DAEOC Early Head Start, New Madrid County Resource Center, Special Health Care Needs, Bootheel Families & Babies, Cover Missouri, MBRC/Healthy Start Community Action Network (CAN), Bootheel Counseling Services, BOLD marketing, Mother to Mother, VA Women and Health, Family Counseling, Building Blocks. Our exhibitors had shared so many helpful resources that are beneficial for our families to achieve a better health outcomes or links to existing community programs; some even brought samples for our attendees to take home.
We had wonderful speakers that touched on important topics. Lauren Clark M.A., MBRC Health Educator provided the audience with a history of Healthy Start & MBRC on their efforts combating the infant mortality in the Bootheel. Martin Maize, a coordinator with the Arkansas Infant and Child Death Review Program from the Arkansas Children’s Hospital shared information on his program and their experience on their efforts against its high IMR “Keeping Kids Alive through Research, Advocacy and Education.” Moreover, Dr. Alan Barnette from the Saint Francis Medical Center spoke on the important topic of Safe Sleep! Co-sleeping is commonly practiced by the families in the Bootheel & many other communities. Dr, Barnette nailed the presentation on the Safe Sleep, and emphasized the importance of educating the families on providing their infants with a safe sleep environment. Lastly, Gina M. Rocchio, MSW, LSW, from Wellness Within Counseling Postpartum Support International in St. Louis, MO provided her expertise in working with women and families experiencing perinatal mood disorders. She covered her topic on “Perinatal mood and Anxiety Disorder. Mom’s Mental Health Matters.” We very much enjoyed all of the speakers, and comments from the audience have affirmed that the presentations were interesting and great resources were shared from these speakers.
Interestingly, this year we had a Program Representatives Panel where many great resources were provided and shared with our audiences. Some of the programs were newly funded and others were existing programs that specifically target families, pregnant women & mothers.
Finally, MBRC & its staff were very appreciative of those that took the time to attend this workshop. We hope you enjoyed this event as much as we did! See you all next year! Follow us on Facebook for our upcoming events & programs updates, and many more!
**Pictures from this event will be shared on our Facebook page!!