Data Source: North Carolina State Center for Health Statistics

What’s Helping?

 ● “Family/home visiting collaborative and community-based parenting programs (…) supports for young teen moms”

 ● Increased awareness of disparities and strategies to turn the curve”

● “Mothering Asheville provides opportunities for collective impact”

 ● “Moving out of silos and working together, coordinated learning, getting word out about, continuing to share what we are doing together vs. competing”

● “Home visitation and case managers programs; Buncombe County Home Visitor Collaborative”

● “Private Mental Health services focused on Perinatal, Positive Parenting, grief, etc.”

 ● “Tele-medicine and mental health services attached with PN clinic”

 What’s Hurting?

 ● “Difficulty accessing affordable, quality childcare”

● “Poverty and systemic racism”

● “Generational trauma compounds health risks”

 ● “Abstinence-only courses”

● “Systemic racism and implicit bias in health care”

 ● “Still operating in silos; need to work towards collective impact to support each other’s work; make sure that when someone finishes a service they are linked in to another service”

● “Racism for mothers who are afraid of the systems”

● “Lack of focus on early prevention and resources for young girls and the high stress and high cortisol levels that young children experiences early on makes it harder to manage stress later.”

● “Services need to be culturally appropriate; how to accept help in a system that you don’t trust, that mothers know “we get you, we are not going to let you fall” and that requires a different outreach”

 ● “Need to focus on Maternal morbidity, as well as Infant Mortality; needs more attention from state DPH, feels like there is no attention on WNC”

Partners With A Role to Play

• CHIP Advisory Council members/agencies

• YWCA-Asheville

• Project Nurturing Asheville and area Families (NAF) – Mount Zion Community Development

• Asheville Buncombe Institute for Parity Achievement (ABIPA)

• Sistas Caring 4 Sistas (SC4S)

• MAHEC

• Buncombe County Women, Infant, and Children (WIC)

• Buncombe County Care Management & Nurse-Family Partnership programming

What Works to Do Better?

• Increase in the number of Black physicians, midwives, doulas, etc.
• Increase the availability of mental health resources/providers to work with mom's and birthing people
• Utilizing trauma-informed models of care throughout pregnancy
• Expansion of home visiting services to support parents and babies
• Dismantling white supremacy culture within healthcare and social services institutions
• Creating systems and services that are equity-driven