Wellstar Spalding Medical Center

If it’s true that women’s health is community health, then it will take a community approach to overcome the biggest barriers to positive maternal health outcomes.

Georgia is facing a maternal mortality epidemic where Black and brown women are three to four times more likely than white women to die from childbirth. The state ranks among the worst in the nation for maternal mortality rates. Yet 89% of these deaths are preventable.

“For too many women in communities around our state, there is a lack of access to care, especially preventative care and screenings that can be lifesaving. At Wellstar, we’re doing something about it,” said Julie Teer, senior vice president of Wellstar and president of the Wellstar Foundation.

Over the past few years, Wellstar has been committed to addressing the increasing maternal mortality rates in Georgia through its doula labor program, which provides high-risk women with the additional support they need to have a healthy pregnancy. The doula assists them through the pregnancy, labor and delivery, as well as the immediate postpartum period.

Now, with the recent award of a $5.5 million Healthy Start grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Wellstar can expand to a more collaborative approach that will convene a community consortium composed of more than 20 diverse, multisector partners to advise and inform activities. The group will also develop and implement plans to improve perinatal outcomes.

The Wellstar Healthy Start program will integrate into the OB/GYN care delivery model at Wellstar to directly impact the communities with the greatest need, including Spalding, Butts and Troup counties. In fact, Troup County ranks among the worst maternal and infant mortality rates in the state.

This funding enables Wellstar to provide individual and group perinatal and parenting education, expand prenatal and postpartum care for high-risk patients through nurse navigators, and increase access to community-based doulas. Additionally, it will provide important wrap-around services and care coordination for the entire family for services that address individualized challenges directly related to racial disparity and the social determinants of health, such as housing, food insecurity, domestic violence, lack of education/employment and access to transportation.

Over the five-year span of this grant, the Healthy Start program will support 3,500 women, fathers, caregivers and infants at Wellstar West Georgia, Wellstar Spalding and Wellstar Sylvan Grove Medical Centers and beyond.

To learn more about the Wellstar Foundation and how you can get involved, visit wellstar.org/foundation.

This blog post is supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of an award totaling $5.5 million with 0% financed with nongovernmental sources. The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement by, HRSA, HHS or the U.S. government.