Her children are still too young to know how the San Fernando Valley’s Black Infant Health program gave them a chance at survival.
But one day Moniquea Johnson will likely tell them. She’ll share how the women who ran the program helped her when she was 18, homeless, and pregnant. They led her to the right services, so that her two boys could be born healthy. They built her confidence so she could start two businesses, to have a future.
“Going through this program I saw other women who made it, and I thought, if they can do it, I can do it too,” Johnson, 27 said. “Now if I have something someone needs, I give it to them. It’s paying it forward, because it was paid to me.”
So when Johnson and others learned recently that the Black Infant Health program was closing as a result of state and county funding cuts, they were saddened and left wondering: where will African American moms searching for some camaraderie turn?
The Mission Hills office shut its doors today .
DISPARITIES AMONG INFANTS
The health and wellness of women and their newborns is at the heart of Black Infant Health, a state program enacted in California in 1989, when public health officials noticed a disparity in infant mortality among African Americans statewide. The Golden State’s overall infant mortality rate of 4.7 per 1,000 live births in 2013 was lower compared to the rate nationwide.
“However, there were significant racial and ethnic disparities, with African American infants dying at rates twice as high as all other racial groups, except those who are two or more races,” according to the California Health Care Foundation.
In addition, about one in seven African American babies in California is born too early or too small, which is higher than those born to white, Latina, and Asian moms, state health experts noted.
The reasons for the health disparities are complex, and may go back to stress-related issues, such as poverty, distrust of the health system, lack of social support, and a history of racial discrimination, experts say.
“Current scientific understanding suggests that experiencing these kinds of stressful conditions — not only during pregnancy, but throughout life — can have dramatic, adverse effects on a woman’s own health and that of her baby,” experts with the California Department of Public Health noted.
The closure leaves Marlene Rowlett, program manager at Black Infant Health for the last 14 years, worried for the women who were recent clients and in need of information.
“There’s a cultural dynamic to this that is at the heart of the program,” Rowlett said. “Women come in here and share. They trust each other. We can all come together and be ourselves.”
Rowlett said Black Infant Health was the go-to program for many other agencies trying to connect with the African American community in the San Fernando Valley.
More than 1,500 women were directly helped through the Valley program, Rowlett said, and thousands of others were indirectly reached. Even after they gave birth, many moms stayed on, to volunteer or else just to visit.
“Here they are, cutting a program that has touched all of these moms,” Rowlett said.
COUNTY CUTS FUNDING
The Valley’s Black Infant Health program began in 2002, and was overseen by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. About $8 million in state funding is divided among the more than a dozen programs across California, including in Pasadena and Long Beach. But officials with LA County’s Maternal, Child, & Adolescent Health program said their share of the state’s funding this year came to $946,299, a 52 percent decrease. The San Fernando Valley’s program ran on a modest $294,750 budget.
Lack of funding also affected a program in Pomona this year. Only those in the Antelope Valley, South L.A., and the South Bay were funded to continue based on more need in those communities, county officials said.
For Rowlett and others, the Valley program’s success was due to street outreach conducted by employees and volunteers such as Alayna Tillman, known as “Miss T.”
“I’ll come up to any woman I see and give her a pamphlet,” Tillman said.
In recent years, more African American women were leaving the Valley, because of high housing costs, said Roxanne Wilson, the Black Infant Health coordinator for client services. That may be why county officials said there was no longer a need in the Valley.
“She was pregnant when she came to us, but then she goes to live where it’s more affordable,” Wilson said of the pregnant women served. “We’ve been seeing that trend for about four years.”
Rowlett said she hopes another, similar program will replace Black Infant Health in the Valley because of the need. Besides providing outreach, the program held special holiday luncheons, Christmas toy giveaways, reunions and served special needs clients.
“Without this program, I wouldn’t have found community,” said Amber Love, a mother of two children who found Black Infant Health in 2010. “They gave me a chance to see myself.”
