Photo via Freestocks/Unsplash
Medicaid expansion has brought health care coverage to thousands of Virginians, but there are thousands more in the commonwealth who don’t qualify for coverage, including many mothers and mothers-to-be.
A partnership in Richmond seeks to close that gap, offering free access to quality care and other services through a mobile maternity clinic. The clinic is through a partnership of Bon Secours in Richmond, which provides the health care through its Care-A-Van, and Urban Baby Beginnings, a nonprofit that provides a range of community support services to families in pregnancy and in parenting, including childbirth and breastfeeding education and care management.
Uninsured and underserved mothers tend to be women of color who have no access to care and no insurance, those working but ineligible for coverage and those who lack transportation to easily access care, according to Stephanie Spencer, executive director of Urban Baby Beginnings. She notes that women of color in Virginia are two or three times more likely to die in childbirth or experience complications.
“Some of the most vulnerable women are those who have received zero prenatal care,” says Kerrissa MacPherson, women’s and children’s coordinator for Bon Secours Richmond.
The earlier the access to care, the better the outcomes for mother and child, leading to reductions in maternal mortality, fewer complications, fewer preterm births and more successful breast feeding, Spencer says.
The clinic is seeing moms-to-be from the Richmond region and across the state, Spencer adds. Many of the patients speak no English or have no proficiency in the language, so the clinic has a translator on site and seeks volunteers who are bilingual.
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Urban Baby Beginnings resources through the Bon Secours Care-A-Van (Photo courtesy Bon Secours Mercy Health)
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Photo courtesy Bon Secours Mercy Health
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Photo courtesy Bon Secours Mercy Health
Services are provided through the Bon Secours Care-A-Van, a mobile medical facility that previously had provided no obstetrics or maternity care. The program is designed to work with mothers and families from pregnancy through the first two years following birth to ensure proper care. “It allows mothers to have a safe space,” Spencer says.
The clinic is offered on Thursdays at a location on Hull Street in Richmond, and “there’s a line out the door,” according to MacPherson. “It’s one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever worked on,” she says. “It’s been an amazing marriage of these two disparate organizations.”
The first pregnant women and families were seen in December, and the service became fully operational in January. The first clinic was fully staffed, expecting to do a dry-run walk-through to smooth out the work flow routine, but there was a line of people in need of services when they arrived, says McPherson. There had been no advertisements prior to that first excursion. “I think that’s a testament to the need,” she adds.
Bon Secours and the nonprofit also have collaborated on the baby box initiative, distributing the boxes to families with newborns, providing a safe sleeping place for infants.
The mobile clinic is funded for a year through a $170,000 innovation grant from the Robins Foundation. Spencer says the program will continue, whether in a mobile clinic or office setting. “This is so important to Richmond mothers,” she says.
“We are working very hard to figure out how to make it sustainable,” says MacPherson.
