The Center has been charged in this project to develop and implement a system of health care in Gadsden County which ensures that all women have access to prenatal care and support services and that children up to age one have services which promote health and normal growth and development.

The Center has established a partnership with Gadsden Citizens for Healthy Babies, Healthy Families Gadsden, and Florida Healthy Start, to develop and implement a coordinated and integrated service delivery system for pregnant and parenting women, infants and their families. Emphasis is on increasing access to prenatal care, healthy life style, childbirth education, postnatal follow-up, and economic self-sufficiency, particularly with high risk families.

The primary goal of this work is to analyze the etiology of racial and ethnic disparities in maternal and child health outcome indicators for Florida, and to explore possible solutions in closing the gap. The project explores economic, cultural, psychosocial, and physiological factors as they relate to disparities in infant mortality.

The goal of this project is to improve services for families with children with disabilities by providing support for two statewide parent advocates to provide expertise, consultation, and technical assistance to the Children's Medical Services Program

The Center works with the Florida Department of Health to provide technical assistance and support in furthering its mission to promote and protect the health of all Floridians. The Center conducts needs assess- ments for Healthy Start Coalitions in the Florida Panhandle, and also serves as fiscal agent for the Gadsden Citizens for Healthy Babies Coalition.

The purpose of this project is to provide technical assistance and consultation to the Bureau of Epidemiology within the Division of Disease Control for the Florida Department of Health. Focus is on the development, implementation and evaluation of health policy, practices, standards and strategies to implement a coordinated, comprehensive program for the prevention and control of Hepatitis A, B and C and their long-term health consequences, including liver failure and death.

The state's family planning program has recently expanded to provide services to postpartum women who are below 185% of poverty and who had Medicaid as a payment source for their prenatal care and delivery. For many women, family planning is the entry point into the health care system where health care problems are identified and referred for treatment. This allows for the early identification of health care conditions that can be either treated or prevented, thus reducing long-term costs. This project provides technical assistance to the Department of Health on these and other family planning issues.

The purpose of this project is to improve the capacity for Healthy Families and Healthy Startproviders to deliver high quality services by providing them with home visiting training and curricular materials. In just the past year, over 2000 copies of the prenatal and infant curricula developed by the Center have been distributed to Healthy Start and Healthy Families workers in Florida, and 40 training sessions have been conducted. Additionally, 67,000 sets of the 100-page handouts have been distributed to high risk families in the state.

The FSU Center has worked for more than two decades in neighboring Gadsden County, one of the most impoverished communities in the state, to improve the quality and quantity of maternal and child health services including: