Healthy Beginnings enables healthier pregnancies

Healthy Beginnings enables healthier pregnancies

Diana Reese and her baby.
Diana Reese gained confidence as a new mother through the Healthy Beginnings program.

Diana Reese was confident and excited when she first found out she was pregnant. However, these feelings quickly eroded when her boyfriend became unsure of his commitment to Diana and the pregnancy. Then she discovered that her mother had stolen her identity. Diana says, “I didn’t understand why all this was happening. It was overwhelming.”

Fortunately, Healthy Beginnings restored her confidence.

When Diana came to Christiana Care’s Women’s Health Practice for prenatal checkups, she enrolled in the Healthy Beginnings program that provides multidisciplinary prenatal and postpartum care in one convenient location to underserved women.

When Diana felt alone and depressed, her Healthy Beginnings case manager encouraged her to join Centering Pregnancy, a group program that brings together women who are due in the same month and gives them the clinical care, education and camaraderie they need.

“Through the centering program, I was with pregnant women who helped me get myself together and feel good about being pregnant again,” Diana said. Diana recently gave birth to her son, Sincere Josiah Reese. She will continue to participate in Healthy Beginnings for postpartum care.

Healthy Beginnings 2009

  • 582 prenatal women enrolled and offered free group educational classes.
  • 310 women received nutritional counseling.
  • 381 women received social-work consultations, smoking-cessation sessions or counseling.
  • 519 babies born.
  • 401 women seen postpartum by a health educator for services or referrals.
  • 97 preconception women seen and offered case management, nutrition, social work, counseling, smoking cessation and educational services.
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