I call this March 9th meeting of the Government Operations Committee to order.

Let's stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Good afternoon.

Councilwoman Nash is unable to attend, so she asked me to lead this meeting.

And I wanted to welcome County Council Member Renee Knapp here.

We invited her to be here because of our first agenda item is a presentation from Family Connects, a home visiting program for parents in Frederick County.

And we thought that she'd benefit from hearing the information as much as we will.

And our second agenda item is a presentation from the building permits and code enforcement department about residential rental licensing.

One of my budget priorities, I'm recommending partial funding for the Family Connects program.

They're here to give an overview of the program, share findings, and discuss funding challenges.

And on a personal note, um, I have had the privilege of having a nurse come after my daughter was born and several of my friends too, and it was an invaluable experience.

So thank you so much for the work that you do, and thank you for being here.

So, Ms.

Pillar, um Olivo and the Family Connects team, I welcome you and take it away.

All right, great.

My name is Heather Kirby, and I am Vice President and Chief Population Health Officer at Frederick Health.

And I'm just gonna do a quick introduction of what we look to cover today, and then talk a little bit about our team.

So we're gonna tell our story, kind of how Family Connects came to Frederick County, talk a little bit about the Family Connects model, what we do, some of our outcome metrics, as well as you'll hear a few family stories, and then talk about our commitment to inclusion and respect.

So we'll share some of that with you as well, and then talk about our sustainability and the challenges into twenty twenty-seven and beyond.

So I am the executive sponsor for the program at Frederick Health.

Brandon Blake is our director of home care operations, and he is the director overseeing the program.

Lori Sprecker is here with us this afternoon, and she's our clinical manager, as well as we've worked very closely with PLR at Adepta and Dr.

Rachel Mandel, who have just been absolutely instrumental from the concept to implementation and through sustainability, as well as working with the coalition for a healthier Frederick County and Malcolm Fergle, who serves as the executive director.

So we know babies thrive when parents have the health care they need and have support from their community.

And the first few weeks after delivery are a critical time for for birth parents and babies.

We also are very concerned about what we see that non-Hispanic black women die from pregnancy-related causes at 2.8 times the rate of non-Hispanic white women here in Maryland.

We also know from the research that 94% of new newborn families of newborns have some kind of need or risk.

So it's very high, very vulnerable time.

We also know from the research on brain development how important serve and return activities right from birth are for building strong brain architecture and how that leads to lifelong health and well-being.

And I undiagnosed maternal and untreated maternal depression anxiety can leave a lasting impact on children's development.

So this on multiple ways, this time is a very important time for us to focus on.

So our origin story is that the hospital and the health department collaborate on a community health needs assessment every three years.

And back in 2017, now going way back then, a group of early childhood advocates was learning about the impact of adverse childhood experiences on brain development.

And they began raising awareness about the importance of this science.

The hospital and the community health and the Coalition for Healthier Frederick County and the health department identified adverse childhood experiences as a priority for the community health needs assessment and then also for health planning in that area.

There was six years of local health work done to plan to prevent, treat, and intervene for adverse childhood experiences.

I had the opportunity to lead that work group in a role for Frederick County.

As a result of the pandemic, the county received ARPA funds, as did the city, and county executive Gardner made a significant investment to launch Family Connects Frederick County.

The grant to Frederick Health was the single largest investment of ARPA dollars that she made at that time because she saw how instrumental the research could be.

She thought this could really set our community on a new trajectory.

As a result, we launched Family Connects Frederick County on January 1st, 2023.

So you're probably wondering why we chose Family Connects as the program that we would be funded for by this money.

This is just some of the research that we looked at that led us in that direction.

And this comes out of Duke, who did the original research for Family Connects.

It showed reduced ED and overnight stays for infants up to 12 months after their visit, reduced CPS investigations up to five years after the visit.

That's sustainability, right?

Reduced postpartum depression, increased community connections, and reduced health disparities for African American families.

So if we take a look at that data, at least just two components of it, and we look at it on the graph.

The family connects families are the blue line, and the families who did not get the service is the red line.

And you can see in terms of the ED and overnight stays for infants up to 12 months, there was significant reduction.

So even after six months, that still persisted and showed you that decrease in those admissions and those ED visits.

The CPS data I find incredibly compelling because we know what has to happen in a household in order for somebody to be referred to CPS.

There's got to be a lot of dysfunction, there's got to be a lot of negative activities in the home.

There's got to be real concern for how the children are doing.

And even after five years, there was a 39% reduction of the family connects families compared to the ones who did not participate.

When you get that kind of an improvement, not only does it impact positively the family, but it really is a community issue in terms of how it impacts all of us.

So it reduces racial disparities, and the data showed that there was a high rate of participation and acceptance across all groups.

And among black non-Hispanic families, there was a decrease in maternal anxiety, maternal depression, father non-support, child emergency medical care, and child maltreatment investigations.

All of these significant in of themselves.

So one thing that's really key about this program, and it's universal.