With this blog, HealthConnect One aims to stimulate dialogue around a growing and powerful model of peer-to-peer support for new families during pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding and early parenting.
As we share here the many voices which inform our work, we hope you will feel inspired, encouraged and sometimes provoked by what you hear/see/read. We hope you will be moved to comment. And while we invite you to openly disagree, we ask you to steer away from comments that may be hurtful, profane, destructive or offensive.
Our goal here is to … breathe. push. grow. … together. Are you with us?
breathe. push. grow. 
I work in a pediatric hospital in Oakland, California and agree with everything Rachel has said. The most effective follow up for new mothers who are not connected to experience mothers in their own families is to have a network of supportive community workers make home visits. I will look for and send on the research done a few years ago in Alameda County. It made some headlines but I don’t know if the program was ever funded and continued, even though they proved it was a success.
Thanks Debbie — I’d love to see the research on your program. Home visiting adds so much to the trust-building, and to the accurate assessment of what challenges mothers are facing. After my staff nurse days, I did some mother-baby home visiting paired with a “Community Aide” (a CHW), and I know that those mothers opened their doors to me because they trusted the CHW. Thanks for responding. ~ Rachel
Nice job….
Thanks, Molly! 🙂