Exploring Healthy Start Studies with the New Orleans Health Department
By Anna Qamarudeen
Over the spring semester, I was privileged to continue working as a Reproductive Justice Intern with the New Orleans Health Department (NOHD). My supervisor, Meshawn A Siddiq, Deputy Director of NOHD, requested that I write a literature review about Healthy Start studies conducted throughout the United States. Healthy Start is one of the programs offered at NOHD. Healthy Start is a government-funded initiative first established by President George H.W. Bush in 1991. The program focuses on assisting families with navigating through prenatal and postnatal care. Currently, there are 101 federally-funded Healthy Start projects in the United States. Since the program is managed by local agencies in each state, the services vary depending on location. The services provided at the City of New Orleans Healthy Start include support for breastfeeding, maternal health, early childhood development, community action networks, family planning, mental health, community outreach and engagement, fatherhood, perception health, data collection and evaluation, infant health, and women’s health.
Tulane University grants students free access to PubMed; therefore, I primarily used this academic resource to find studies for my literature review. I was very excited to apply the skills that I acquired from my public health classes taken in previous semesters to this project. The Foundations of Epidemiology course I completed last semester was valuable in helping me understand and interpret the data and language used in the research articles. My supervisor and I were interested in learning about whether Healthy Start produces positive outcomes for women and infants enrolled in the program, so I searched for studies on PubMed that addressed these groups. I also examined Healthy Start studies that researched different maternal and child health topics, such as prenatal depression, the impact of substance abuse on infant health, adiposity in infants and children, and breastfeeding. Whenever I found a study with favorable data and evidence, I incorporated it into my literature review. I wrote a paragraph for each study summarizing the topic that was researched, the goal of the study, the location, the number of participants, the methods utilized to collect data, and the results. In most of the studies I inspected, they demonstrated that Healthy Start programs improved outcomes for women and infants, even if it was by a small margin.
This semester was an amazing opportunity for me to further immerse and familiarize myself with the research process, as I will be conducting public health research of my own over the summer. During the summer, I will be continuing my journey as an intern for the New Orleans Health Department while additionally researching an injury and violence prevention topic with the University of Washington. I am looking forward to developing new skills this summer. I am very grateful to the Newcomb Institute and the New Orleans Health Department for providing me with the experience to expand my knowledge of reproductive rights and maternal and child health.