Healthy Start

Healthy Start’s mission is to reduce infant mortality and other poor birth outcomes specifically in those populations at highest medical and socioeconomic risk. While THD’s Healthy Start program has served Tulsa County families for over 20 years, the current five-year grant cycle is targeted to eight Tulsa County zip codes north of Admiral Boulevard. Healthy Start provides pregnant and parenting families with free and confidential clinic and home-based perinatal case management services, health and parenting education, newborn needs, Fatherhood program, housing and employment assistance, , smoking cessation, and domestic violence and substance abuse intervention. Healthy Start also provides – uniquely, through a grant from the George Kaiser Family Foundation – a transportation component which directly assists clients having fewer missed clinic appointments.

Infant mortality is one of the most sensitive measures of a community’s social welfare. Healthy Start’s clinic-based and home-visitation case management services directly impacts the prevalence of infant mortality, preterm births and low-birth-weight births in those Tulsa populations of highest risk for those health disparities.

Renita Clemons, THD Healthy Start Case Manager; Rep. Regina Goodwin (OK-73), and Renita’s classmate at the Juneteenth ‘Black Health Counts’ event

For the first time, this year’s annual Tulsa Juneteenth event included a one-day “Black Health Counts” Speakers Forum to address health disparities specifically in Tulsa’s African American community. THD Healthy Start was asked to participate in this forum as both educators and speakers.

Healthy Start team members working the COVID-19 vaccine POD

Of the 101 HRSA Healthy Start Grantees, and as a program of the Tulsa City-County Health Department, THD Healthy Start was one of only three grantees nationwide required to participate in the state and local Public Health COVID-19 Response. The COVID-19 Response work was 10%-50% above regular grant requirements and totaled 452 hours for just the one month of January 2021. Case managers maintained client contact via texting, porch drop-offs and social media while contributing to the response.

By the numbers

603 clients served
3,822 contacts

Grants, Awards & Recognition Received

$1,007,817 HRSA award 2019-2020
$30,000 George Kaiser Family Foundation 2019-2020
$950,000 Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA)
$57,817 addt’l award Nov, 2019
Surpassed by 18% the HRSA expectation on total number of clients served

Created By

Tulsa Health Department

Appreciate

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