This document provides a report of the results of the baseline prenatal survey conducted through collaboration between the Alliance for Innovations in Health Care, Maricopa County Department of Public Health, and the Resilience Solutions Group at Arizona State University. The goals of the survey were to assess satisfaction with prenatal and birth care, barriers to access to prenatal care, and psychosocial predictors of positive prenatal care experiences and infant health outcomes.

Health Start is a neighborhood outreach program that helps high-risk pregnant women obtain early and consistent prenatal care and, for their children, timely immunizations. Its mission is to educate, support, and advocate for families at risk by promoting optimal use of community based family health and education services through the use of community health workers, who live in, and reflect the ethnic, cultural, and socioeconomic characteristics of the community they serve.

Prior to 1967, Arizona had one of the highest infant mortality rates in the country. That year, in an effort to reduce the high infant mortality and morbidity rates, Arizona applied for and received a federal demonstration grant. The grant was designed to reduce infant death by transporting critically ill newborns born in rural hospitals into intensive care centers. As a result, there was a dramatic decrease in neonatal mortality. Part of that grant was to provide home based Community Nursing Services to the infants and their families. Community Health Nurses provided follow-up home visits for the NICP infants and their families up to one year of age.