Midlands Healthy Start has served more than 15,000 women and their infants and partners/fathers since its inception in 1997.
March 29, 2024 | Erin Bluvas, bluvase@sc.edu
When Prisma Health decided to expand their Midlands Healthy Start (formerly Palmetto Healthy Start) program, they turned to maternal and child health expert and epidemiology professor Jihong Liu. A long-time partner of the Healthy Start Program and director of USC’s Maternal and Child Health Catalyst and Maternal and Child Health LEAP programs, Liu has already led evaluations into the program’s effectiveness.
The 25-year program’s goal is to improve outcomes for mothers and infants by providing support services from prenatal care to birth and beyond. In 2023, Liu published results from the program’s first comprehensive evaluation in the American Journal of Public Health – finding that the program improves both health behaviors and practices. Specifically, the federally-funded initiative leads to significant reductions in inadequate prenatal care, large-for-gestational-age births, and inadequate weight gain during pregnancy. It also has positive impacts on breast feeding practices and participation in other public services programs.
Based on the program’s effectiveness and the evidence provided by Liu’s evaluation,
Prisma Health applied for funding through the Health Resources and Services Administration’s
Healthy Start Initiative - Enhanced (HSE) Program. With goals to address racial/ethnic
disparities in maternal and child health outcomes, the program supports projects in
diverse communities and populations.
Prisma Health was one of only 10 entities nationwide to receive funding for their program. With support from the $5.5 million grant, Liu and members of the Rural and Minority Heath Research Center will help establish Upstate Healthy Start. This program extension in the Northwest part of the state will provide enhanced perinatal services to underserved Black women and their infants and partners in Anderson, Cherokee, Greenville, Greenwood, Laurens and Lexington counties.
Providing direct services is an essential part of improving maternal and child health outcomes among underserved high-risk populations, and it is also important to convene a community of diverse stakeholders to sustain and grow these efforts in the Upstate.
“Midlands Healthy Start has been very successful in providing core services to Black women and their infants and has well-established systems, policies and procedures in place,” Liu says. “Providing direct services is an essential part of improving maternal and child health outcomes among underserved high-risk populations, and it is also important to convene a community of diverse stakeholders to sustain and grow these efforts in the Upstate.”
The program is so effective that individual populations have seen a difference in infant mortality rates depending upon its availability. Richland County, where Midlands Healthy Start is located, saw a 37 percent reduction in infant mortality rates (40 percent in the Black population) in the first decade of the program alone. When the program moved to serve other higher-needs areas, the rates climbed 13 percent – prompting Prisma to reapply for funding to reinstate the program. They’ve seen similar effects in other areas, which is why Lexington County has been included in the current grant as part of the enhanced initiative.
Over the past 25 years, Midlands Healthy Start has served more than 15,000 women and their infants and partners/fathers. Through various funding cycles, it has shifted and expanded to provide services to support vulnerable and underserved groups in South Carolina.
