2022-2026 Perinatal Health Strategic Plan
Goal 2 - Strengthen Families and Communities
Point 5. Invest in community building
- Lower barriers to broadband internet deployment
- Educate community leaders and low-income households on affordable broadband options
- Increase access to stable, safe, and affordable housing
- Increase access to nutrition education and healthy foods by referring families to local WIC clinics and other nutrition food assistance and nutrition education resources (e.g., SNAP, NSLP, CACFP, SNP)
- Incorporate active transportation infrastructure (e.g., sidewalks, bicycle routes, public transit) into jurisdictional planning
- Reduce exposures to environmental toxins including, but not limited to, lead, agricultural pesticides, flame retardants, and PFAS
- Support civic participation through building community networks and increasing voter participation and engagement with policymakers at the local and state levels
- Invest in programs and resources to mitigate and reduce forms of community violence including intimate partner violence, police brutality and over-policing, gun violence, and human trafficking
Point 6. Support coordination and cooperation to promote reproductive justice within communities
- Increase implementation sites for programs that offer evidence-based and community-informed reproductive life planning, including Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiatives (TPPI), Healthy Beginnings, and fatherhood initiatives
- Develop and implement programs in schools and community settings about puberty, reproductive health care, healthy relationships, and selecting a provider for youths and their parents/caregivers
- Work with state partners to implement reproductive life planning and reproductive justice trainings for health care providers, school staff, and others
- Increase businesses, faith entities, and public buildings that qualify as breastfeeding friendly, and normalize breastfeeding in public spaces
Point 7. Enhance coordination and integration of family support services
- Increase enrollment of community agencies and providers into NCCARE360
- Increase the use of Care Management for High-Risk Pregnant Women (CMHRP) and NCCARE360
- Decrease fragmentation in service delivery by automatically transitioning postpartum people on Pregnancy Medicaid to Medicaid, if eligible, or to the NC "Be Smart" Family Planning Medicaid Program
- Complete a feasibility study on adding Medicaid coverage for antepartum, intrapartum, and postpartum doula services
- Increase the number of Prepaid Health Plans (PHPs) that cover doula services
- Increase the number of patient and family advisory councils within DPH agencies, and increase patient and community membership on advisory boards of contracted partners
- Elevate the role of community health workers in addressing the social drivers of health
- Develop a statewide structure for maternal home visiting to ensure equitable access for all pregnant and postpartum women
- Promote the use of the Breastfeeding Attrition Prediction Tool - Breastfeeding Control (BAPT-BFC), and/or another applicable screening tool, by maternal health providers to identify mothers at risk for not meeting their breastfeeding goal
- Expand efforts to prevent infant deaths related to unsafe sleep environments.
Point 8. Strengthen father and co-parent involvement in families
- Increase implementation sites for evidence-based parenting programs to strengthen parenting skills (e.g., Family Connects, Triple P, CenteringParenting, Nurturing Parenting)
- Improve/develop guidelines for the inclusion of males and other caregivers in preconception, prenatal, interconception, postpartum, and early childhood health and human services
- Institute gender equity in policies, and use evidence-based strategies to promote healthy family relationships (e.g., normalizing the use of paid family leave and kin care leave by fathers, installing changing tables in men's restrooms)
- Increase implementation sites for evidence-based fatherhood programs to promote fatherhood engagement within the family (e.g., 24/7 Dad and DoctorDad)
Last Modified: April 24, 2023