A national program that helps soon-to-be first-time moms with low incomes is coming to Lewis County in early 2016.
Getting the Nurse-Family Partnership program to the county has been a goal of Lewis County Public Health & Social Services for some time, and now, thanks to funding primarily from one-10th of 1 percent sales tax dollars for mental health, that goal is being reached.
Nurse-Family Partnership is a decades old program that is active in 43 states, including Washington, and brings nurses into the homes of vulnerable, low-income mothers expecting their first child to educate them about caring for themselves and their child before and after giving birth.
Two major goals of the program are to increase school readiness for children as well as economic self-sufficiency for the mothers.
In Lewis County, the program intends to reach women throughout the area, and is expected to bring on two nurses who can work with up to 20 mothers each.
The program will be housed with Lewis County Public Health, but the $431,370 funding request for 2016 and 2017 was made by the Lewis County Community Health Partnership.
John Abplanalp, public health community services manager, said that a community health assessment and its results helped to propel the interest in the program due to the high intergenerational poverty rates.
According to the assessment published in 2014, in 2012, 15.9 percent of Lewis County residents were living at or below the poverty line, compared to 13.5 percent statewide, and poverty rates for female householder families exceed the average.
“Economic health is important for physical health and mental health, so one of the primary goals of this program is increasing the economic self-sufficiency of these young mothers,” he said. “So I think that’s really going to get to the core of addressing some of these issues that we deal with and see the impacts of everyday.”
The study also found the county has a high risk for poor birth outcomes, especially in teen births, births to unwed mothers and mothers who smoke during pregnancy.
Teen pregnancy rates in the county aren’t decreasing, which is the trend statewide and nationally.
The rate of 18.5 teen births per 1,000 has remained steady since 2001, and 17.7 percent of teens reported smoking during their pregnancies. The state rate is 12.7 percent.
The assessment also found that tobacco use during pregnancy of mothers of all ages has been higher in Lewis County than the state since 1998.
Abplanalp said the nurses will determine what modules work best for each client in the program, and said some curriculum for women could include substance abuse education.
“They really need to be customized because not everybody has the same issues,” he said.
He said some outcomes also include spacing out how often the mothers are having children, an increase in the participation of fathers and an increase in the likelihood the mothers will be married.
“Realistically, how likely is it that a single woman is going to be able to afford to raise her child without any government subsidies? It’s much less likely than when you have two parents who are paying into that,” he said.
Another component of the program is goal-setting for the mothers because many people living in low-income situations are living day-to-day.
The program requires that enrollees cannot be further than six months along in their first pregnancies, Abplanalp said, because one of the goals is better prenatal care, which leads to a healthier baby.
The nurses will work with the mothers until the child is 2 years old.
He said the reason the program focuses on first-time moms is because researchers who developed the program realized it is easier to help women who haven’t parented before rather than women with established parenting styles.
Abplanalp said mothers will likely be referred to Nurse-Family Partnership through practitioners, midwives and the Women, Infants and Children governmental program.
