Mother Mary Clare Bezner, OSB, prioress of Holy Angels Convent and chair of St. Bernards Healthcare Governing Board, said a new program at St. Bernards Medical Center in Jonesboro shows the importance of being holistically pro-life.
The Arkansas Department of Human Services announced Nov. 15 that St. Bernards Healthcare will open the first Maternal Life360 HOME program this month to provide services to women in high-risk pregnancies. The program is in addition to the Rural Life360 and the Success Life360 programs, which support rural clients with mental illness and substance abuse issues and young adults at risk of poverty and poor health, respectively.
The new program is designed to support high-risk pregnant women through a series of home-visiting services throughout their pregnancy and for up to two years after birth. The program aims to improve long-term health by tackling challenges, such as food insecurity and inadequate housing.
Dana Lands, St. Bernards nursing director for Women’s & Children’s Services, said the program’s development began after an executive order from Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
“Gov. Sanders issued an executive order (March 6) to support moms, protect babies and improve maternal health after acknowledging high maternal and newborn morbidity and mortality rates in Arkansas,” Lands told Arkansas Catholic. “The program was developed through the Arkansas Department of Health and ARHOME Medicaid expansion program.”
The program will serve women in Craighead County who are enrolled in Medicaid, with a second Life360 Home expected to open in Batesville in the future, serving women in Independence County.
Lands said St. Bernards is the first hospital in Arkansas to launch the program, and the hospital will partner with ‘Parents as Teachers’ to provide in-home visits.
“The process starts when a patient seeks prenatal care at our pregnancy clinic,” Lands said. “All our patients undergo a full pregnancy assessment and are screened for social determinants of health. If we identify high-risk factors and the women are Medicaid recipients, we provide education about the program. Finally, if they agree, we refer them.”
Lands said after the referral, a Parents as Teachers representative contacts the mothers to establish visits.
“When the representatives meet with the mothers, they perform several assessments to decide how they can best support each pregnancy as well as delivery and care of the babies,” Lands said. “This support could be anything from education on a high-risk diagnosis, providing resources for food, transportation, financial counseling, health care management, encouraging well-child visits and more. The list is endless, but most importantly, it helps establish trust and open conversations that get these new or expanding families a healthy start.”
Mother Mary Clare said the program is unique since it will follow women up to two years after they give birth.
“It will help so many women, children, families to be able to treat their children and raise their children in a way that is holistic and healthy,” she said. “… Maybe in their poverty, they’ve missed something along the way or haven’t had the opportunity to learn something or have the gifts they need to be able to raise a child with all of the healthy benefits that everybody else has. This is going to give them that little bit of extra help that they need to really know and understand about the health of their own child.”
Mother Mary Clare said the program will help reduce maternal and infant mortality in Arkansas. The state ranks worst in the country for maternal mortality and third worst for infant mortality.
“A lot of times, (low-income families) are unable to get to doctor’s appointments. They might not have good transportation, and they need to work, so they can’t miss out on days when they work. They might not have childcare for the other children in the home or even the gas money to provide them with the needed transportation,” she said. “By having … somebody go to them … the person in charge of the program will then be able to see the scenario that they’re actually looking at. They can gauge the reality of what is needed in that home to help them get to a level where they are able to properly care for the child. It won’t just help the child that was just born — it’s going to help the whole family.”
