The Team Nutrition Grant Project began in 2003 with the goal to guide and assist schools to create and maintain a coordinated, comprehensive school health program. Such a program integrates a school’s child nutrition programs, with the classroom, the community, and entire school environment. A coordinated, comprehensive school health program (CSHP) can be implemented to create a healthy school environment through a “model” nutrition policy. Using the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service Team Nutrition’s Changing the Scene, A Guide to Local Action, the project proposed to implement the model at a state level by forming a state level coalition of key decision makers within the school environment.

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.

As one of the largest Federal block grant programs, Title V is the key source of support for promoting and improving the health of all the nation‘s mothers and children. Each year, all states are required to submit an Application and Annual Report for Federal funds for their Maternal and Child Health Services Title V Block Grant to States Program to the Maternal and Child Health Bureau in the Health Resources and Services Administration.