HRSA Administrator Betty Duke delivered the opening plenary address August 6 at the 2007 Healthy Start Grantee Meeting in Arlington, VA, sharing success stories of individual Healthy Start projects and reiterating the agency’s commitment to improving birth outcomes in racial and ethnic minority communities.

All 99 of HRSA’s Healthy Start grantees attended the conference, titled “Celebrating Healthy Women, Healthy Families, Healthy Communities.”

Communities served by Healthy Start programs have large minority populations with high rates of infant mortality, unemployment, poverty and crime. The locally based programs identify and develop community-based approaches to reduce infant mortality rates and improve the health and wellbeing of women, infants, children and their families.

While each project uses local input to shape outreach and treatment strategies, all of the projects share the same “core” program goals: to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in perinatal health, improve local health care systems, and increase consumers’ voices in health care decisions.

“When you think about it, pregnancy really offers a clinician nine months of what I call ‘teaching’ moments,” Duke told the audience. “And we know that when Healthy Start projects teach mothers about good health habits and give them strong prevention messages, you are, in fact, teaching the entire family. The health habits learned during pregnancy will stay with a woman and her family for their entire lives.”

Rose Stith Singleton, program manager at the Richmond, VA Healthy Start Initiative, called this year’s meeting “the best ever.” The break-out sessions and plenary speakers were “exceptional!” she said. “And the research data were presented at a level where anyone could understand. I actually looked forward to staying until the very last gavel sounded.”

“I am a seasoned project director,” she said, “but I still look forward to attending the annual grantee meeting. Each year I learn something new that will benefit our project.”

Since HRSA launched Healthy Start in 1991 with 15 grantees, the program has grown to include 99 communities in 37 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.

Peggy Sanchez-Mills, CEO National Healthy Start Association presents Dr. Peter van Dyck, Associate Administrator for HRSA's Maternal and Child Health Bureau with a National Infant Mortality Awareness Month baseball cap.