A city in a Southern state with one of the worst maternal and infant mortality rates is trying to improve health outcomes for babies and moms — not with the latest tech, but through old-fashioned house calls.
Louisiana has a maternal mortality rate of 37.3 per 100,000 live births and an infant mortality rate of 7.1 per 1,000 live births, according to March of Dimes, and the dismal statistics have prompted New Orleans to launch a home visit program through the city’s health department.
“We got to do some things real differently, unless you like being No. 50 all the time,” New Orleans’ health director Jennifer Avegno, who helped launched the program, told KFF Health News.
Family Connects New Orleans offers free visits to anyone who has just given birth in a New Orleans hospital, regardless of their insurance status or income level. Nurses come and weigh, measure and examine the newborns and check in on the mothers’ wellbeing.
The nurses also can screen for postpartum depression and ask moms if they want birth control — a critical question after the state passed one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country.
Lizzie Frederick, a New Orleans mother diagnosed with postpartum depression, said she was grateful for the house visit even though she had done everything she could to prepare for her infant son.
“I think that I would have felt a lot more alone if I hadn’t had this visit and struggled in other ways without the resources that the nurse provided,” she told KFF.
The Family Connects model began in Durham, North Carolina, in 2008 — every $1 invested in the program saved $3.17 in health care costs — and has now spread to communities in 20 states.
