Healthy Start

Healthy Start aims to:

• Improve health outcomes before, during, and after pregnancy
• Reduce racial and ethnic differences in rates of infant deaths and negative maternal health outcomes

Local projects enroll women, infants, children (up to 18 months), and partners. They tailor their services to their local community’s needs.

How We Help Women and Their Families

We invest in communities with infant mortality rates that are at least one and a half times the U.S. national average. As of 2021, HRSA awarded over $100 million to 101 Healthy Start Award Recipients in 35 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.

Local projects have an impact on not just the individual, but also the overall community by conducting activities such as:

• Health care services
  • Prenatal, post-partum, well-baby, youth care, reproductive life planning, and women’s health
  • Screening and referral to services for depression, substance use, and interpersonal violence
• Services that increase access to health care and improve health outcomes
  • Outreach and case management
  • Screening and referrals for health care, insurance, and social services such as WIC, home visiting, and doula services
  • Parenting skill building, self-esteem building, child care, father support, and translation
  • Transportation, housing assistance, job training, prison/jail-based services
• Public Health Services
  • Immunization and health education (for example, smoking cessation, youth pregnancy prevention, childbirth education, breastfeeding and nutrition)
• Provider training
  • Continuing education and training on best practices for Healthy Start staff and community partners

Building Partnerships

Awardees partner within local communities to build upon a community’s existing resources to improve the quality of, and access to, health care and other supports.

Every Healthy Start project has a Community Action Network (CAN). Neighborhood residents, community leaders, consumers, medical and social service providers, faith-based leaders, and business representatives make up the CAN.

The CAN addresses:

• Fragmented service delivery
• Creating culturally and linguistically appropriate services

Awardees collaborate with other local programs and at the federal and state levels. Some collaborations include:

• The Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program
• Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC)
• Early Head Start
• Title V State Maternal and Child Health Block Grant
• Medicaid
• Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP)
• Local community health centers that provide maternity care services

Gathering Data and Tracking Progress

HRSA and awardees regularly collect project and participant data to monitor and evaluate ongoing activities. We collect data through the Healthy Start Monitoring and Evaluation Data System, which stores participant-level data. Access these evaluation reports:

• Analysis of the Healthy Start Program of the Maternal and Child Health Bureau, Health Resources and Services Administration (February 20, 2020) (PDF - 2 MB)
• Summary of Findings from the 2017 National Healthy Start Evaluation (October 2020) (PDF - 658 KB)

Awardee Resources

Healthy Start EPIC Center: provides expertise and training for the Healthy Start awardees to strengthen their work

CAREWare for Healthy Start database: a database for awardees for data collection, case management, and reporting

Funding Details

• Find the organizations that are Healthy Start awardees in your state
• Healthy Start Initiative: Eliminating Disparities in Perinatal Health (2019 closed Notice of Funding Opportunity)
• Healthy Start Supplement: Community Based Doulas (2022 closed Notice of Funding Opportunity)
• Supporting Healthy Start Performance Project (PDF - 247 KB) (2019 archived Notice of Funding Opportunity)
  • Healthy Start Initiative: Eliminating Disparities in Perinatal Health Supplement: Action Plans for Infant Health Equity (2021 archived Notice of Funding Opportunity)
  • Healthy Start Supplement: Community-Based Doulas (2021 archived Notice of Funding Opportunity)
• Use our mapping tool to find state- and county-level information for a fiscal year. Filter by the Healthy Start Initiative under the drop-down option “Program Name – Activity Code”

Contact Us

Benita Baker, MS
Healthy Start Branch Chief