Program to reduce infant mortality subsidizes costs
Michel’le Miller wiped the tears from her eyes as she talked about her rock bottom.
It was December. She had three children and one on the way. But she knew she needed to leave an unhealthy relationship.
So she left the children in their father’s care, crammed into her Dodge Magnum whatever she could fit, and drove to the Van Buren Shelter in Franklinton.
“I didn’t have a plan,” said the 29-year-old Miller. “... I was just jumping out there on faith, like ‘I know how strong I am. I’ll figure it out.’”
About four months later, Miller was living in a townhouse on the Northeast Side. Roughly two months after that, her son Maylond was born.
And three weeks after that, she sat on her couch, wiping away the tears, thankful that she and all of her children were together under one roof.
Miller’s journey to her new family room started when she saw a sign at the shelter for Healthy Beginnings at Home, a program led by CelebrateOne, a private-public collaboration housed at Columbus Public Health that has the goal of reducing the number of central Ohio babies who die before their first birthday.
Something told her to save the number on that sign, and the next day she called.
The program offers subsidized housing to 50 low-income pregnant women in unstable hosing conditions homeless, facing eviction or “couch surfing” among the homes of others, said Christina Ratleff, project manager for Healthy Beginnings at Home. Forty-eight have been housed, one will be housed soon, and one has moved out of the area. The women also receive traditional community services.
It’s part of a study to determine whether housing programs can help reduce infant death rates. Preliminary CelebrateOne statistics show that 136 Franklin County babies died before their first birthday last year, a rate of 7.5 per 1,000 births. The coalition’s goal is to reduce that rate to at least 6.0 per 1,000 births by 2020.
The outcomes of women in the Healthy Beginnings at Home program will be compared with those of 50 women also in unstable housing situations who received the traditional community services but were not placed in homes.
Over the two-year program, researchers will look at indicators such as preterm births and low birth weights, breastfeeding prevalence, attendance at post-partum visits and the self-reported health of mothers.
The women pay a portion of their rent and utilities equal to 30% of their gross income, receiving subsidies for 15 months, Ratleff said. After that, they are given a six month step-down of subsidies, gradually paying a little bit more until they are responsible for the full market rate. They then receive follow-up services for three months.
A long list of partners are chipping in to the program with CelebrateOne. Among them are the Homeless Families Foundation, Nationwide Children’s Hospital, the StepOne for a Healthy Pregnancy coalition, the CareSource Medicaid managed care organization and the Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority, which provided 10 townhouses.
About 60% of the more than $1.8 million in funding came from the Ohio Housing Finance Agency and the Ohio Department of Medicaid. More than a dozen corporations, nonprofits and private developers also contributed.