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Healthy Start offers free and confidential parenting education and support for families in Central and East San Diego. Health educators (“patient navigators”) who are highly trained in perinatal support and case management provide home-based visits for families from the time they are pregnant until their child is 2 years old. Our goals are to empower parents as their children’s best teachers and advocates, stimulate and support early child development through healthy and nurturing...

By Elizabeth Chuck and Haimy Assefa, NBC News, February 8, 2020 The twins were scheduled to be delivered on Aug. 21, 2019, and Stephanie Snook was nervous. Her pregnancy had not been planned. Snook was born with a heart condition; after her first two children, she had been told getting pregnant again could put too much stress on her heart. Nonetheless, Snook, 37, a warehouse clerk in food services at the Seattle Mariners’ ballpark, trusted she was in good hands. [ Please click here to read...

By Arlene Harris, The Irish Times, February 7, 2020 While it may be an innate and mainly joyful event, many pregnant women feel anxious at the thought of going through labour and can suffer emotional and physical distress during the delivery itself. And there is one group of women for whom there is an extra level of trauma associated with the arrival of their unborn child – those who have been victims of sexual assault. Hazel Larkin is a sexual abuse survivor and over the coming months will...

Community Updates, December 19, 2019 With the support of the Burke Foundation, in early 2019 the Children’s Home Society of New Jersey (CHSofNJ) launched AMAR, a community-based doula program , to improve prenatal, labor, and postpartum support for Hispanic women in the City of Trenton. Now, the organization is thrilled to see the first group of trainees graduate from the program. New Jersey has the fifth highest maternal mortality rate in the country. To address this significant challenge...

We are proud to celebrate the 71 community initiatives that joined the ACEs Connection network in 2019. They are listed below, and can be found along with all existing ACEs Connection communities via the ACEs Connection map. Communities in the United States: Midwest ACEs Indiana Coalition Ardmore (OK) Behavioral Health Collaborative: BOUNCE - Jefferson County (KY Chisago County (MN) ACEs Initiative Franciscan Health ACEs Connection FH–Jasper & Newton Counties (IN ) FH–LaPorte County (IN)...

By Bror M. Ranum, Lars Wichstrom, and Stale Pallesen, JAMA Network Open, December 27, 2019 Question: What is the long-term and bidirectional association between sleep duration and symptoms of psychiatric disorders in school-aged children? Findings: In this population-based cohort study of 799 Norwegian children participating in the Trondheim Early Secure Study, when all time-invariant confounders and baseline levels of study variables were accounted for, short sleep duration was...

*One a small percentage of families in need of diapers are able to access them through a "diaper bank". Objectives. To document the collective effort of diaper banks in the United States and to estimate the percentage of low-income children whose diaper need is met through these efforts. Methods. For each state, we compared the number of children younger than 4 years in families living at or below 200% of the federal poverty level with the number of children served by diaper banks in each...

Sharing our recent editorial which includes a call for TIC in maternity care: "Nevertheless, there are ways in which VA may be able to augment the maternity care pregnant veterans receive to empower and facilitate more trauma-informed approaches to obstetric care. These include investing in programs to ensure peer support, possibly through use of mobile health technology; facilitating collaboration with maternity care providers through provision of handheld/electronic maternity records...

PBS NEWSHOUR: Researchers are trying to better understand the biology of stress and its impact on child health. Now, data suggests those connections may form as early as the womb, with studies indicating frequent and prolonged adversity for pregnant women can affect the development of their babies. Stephanie Sy reports on a program aimed at easing the stress and struggles of mothers and their unborn children. ...

Sex & Perinatal Mental Health Conference on January 13th and 14th, 2020 at The California Endowment. This dynamic training will delve into areas such as postpartum sex, birth trauma, cultural attitudes about sex, gender and sexuality, gender affirming care, personal stories and more. We have an amazing lineup of speakers and wanted to introduce you to a few over the next couple of weeks. Two day training that will explore how sex and sexuality impact and interact with mental health...

A baby born prematurely often spends that crucial time for attachment and development of neural pathways in the NICU

By Erika Edwards, NBC News, December 2, 2019 Extremely hot weather appears to prompt early labor, leading to as many as 25,000 early births every year in the U.S., according to a study published Monday. The research, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, analyzed data on 56 million births from 1969 to 1988, matching the birth dates to weather events in the counties where babies were born. "We saw a spike in births on hot days," said study author Alan Barreca, an associate professor...