Olmsted County Public Health Services and Cradle 2 Career earn leadership award

  • News
  • Oct 28, 2024

Olmsted County Public Health Services’ (OCPHS) Family Home Visiting program and Cradle 2 Career have won the 2024 Maternal and Child Health Betty Hubbard Leadership Award at the community level. This award, created in 1990 by the Minnesota Department of Health, was named after Hubbard, who worked to improve health for women and children. 

The award celebrates the teamwork between OCPHS and Cradle 2 Career to improve care for mothers and infants. Over the past 10 years, studies have shown that Olmsted County lags behind the rest of Minnesota when it comes to prenatal care. Getting sufficient prenatal care helps ensure babies are born healthy. This includes starting provider or home visits early and going to recommended provider appointments. 

OCPHS and Cradle 2 Career collaborated to help groups facing the most significant challenges. These groups were identified through Olmsted County’s Community Health Improvement Plan. According to the report, Black and African American pregnant people, pregnant people aged 15-19, and pregnant people who did not finish high school experience the greatest disparities in prenatal care. 

By listening to families and community members, OCPHS and Cradle 2 Career learned what was causing barriers to receiving care: transportation, a lack of trust in providers, and trouble finding and understanding resources. To help solve these problems, the team worked with the community to identify solutions and provide care that respects different cultures. The recommendations identified include finding solutions around: 

  • Transportation. 
  • Relationships between families and professional support. 
  • Education and access to information. 
  • Emotion support groups. 
  • Resource navigators. 
  • Trauma-informed care. 
  • Culturally informed and responsive care. 

“We are so honored to win this award,” Cradle 2 Career Network Facilitator Winnie Godi said. “This project shows how working together can help us reach our goals. But the real heroes are the community members who shared their stories with us. Their ideas helped us find ways to make things better.” 

“Receiving this award is a great honor. We are proud of our collaboration with Cradle 2 Career and the impact it has had,” said OCPHS Healthy Children and Families Manager Sarah Stevens. “By working together and learning from those most impacted, we are making important strides to help pregnant people receive adequate prenatal care and the support they need.” 

OCPHS and Cradle 2 Career stress the need for the community to come together to address the challenges pregnant people face in accessing prenatal care. Cradle 2 Career has convened a group to take the next steps to address the barriers and implement the solutions and recommendations from the co-designers.