Healthy Beginnings Program
New mom Heidi Garcia Gonzalez listens as East Region Community Health nurse Michele Brezniak, right, talks about the benefits of the Healthy Beginnings program recently established at Windham Hospital. Translator Emilia Triay, center, helped with the translation for Heidi who speaks Spanish.
Hartford HealthCare’s Healthy Beginnings Program, part of Windham Hospital’s Women’s Health Center, brings information and support directly to new moms, and includes home visits and connecting new moms to resources that they might not even know about.
The goal of program is to help establish healthy behaviors and community connections while fostering a feeling of connectedness during the postpartum period that is historically lonely for a new mom.
The program is open to any mom who receives care at the Windham Women’s Health Center, no matter where they give birth.
Women are first notified of the program through the Windham Hospital Women's Health Center, which is staffed by OB/GYN Eugene Rozenshteyn, MD, and nurse midwife Erin Bane, who is bilingual. After delivery, new moms are contacted to set up a visitation time. A community health worker along with community health nurse visits mom and baby in their home or location of their choice. During the visit, the community health worker and nurse partner with the new mom to identify needs she may have and help her to obtain services. Then a follow up visit is scheduled for six weeks later to check in on progress and identify any barriers.
Services include
- Healthy eating before and after birth
- The importance of sleep
- Postpartum depression
- Breastfeeding
- Poison prevention
- Water safety
- Finances
- Health insurance
- Housing
- Heating assistance
- Food assistance
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