We are excited to announce that WIN Network: Detroit is one of five recipients of the 2019 NOVA award from the American Hospital Association. The award recognizes “hospital-led collaborative efforts that improve community health,” which we received for our efforts to provide group prenatal care to Detroit residents in collaboration with Henry Ford Women’s Health.

WIN Network: Detroit was launched in 2011 to build a comprehensive system of care for women ages 18 to 35 in Detroit and connect them with available community resources. For years, disconnected services have led to this alarming statistic – black babies in Detroit are twice as likely as white babies to die before their first birthday.

In 2016, WIN Network: Detroit began offering an enhanced model of group prenatal care, co-facilitated by Certified Nurse Midwives and Community Health Workers. Group prenatal care patients get more time with their provider, education on all they need to know to have a healthy pregnancy and baby, and home visits from their Community Health Worker until their baby turns one. Since beginning group prenatal care we have experienced no preventable infant deaths amongst group prenatal care participants, and better-than-average rates of preterm birth and low birthweight births compared to the City of Detroit.

Notable birth outcomes from April 2016 – May 2019:

• No infant deaths. Infant mortality is the death of young children under the age of one.

• Average birth weight, 6.76 pounds; average gestational age was 39.3 weeks.

• Babies born pre-term, 9.

• 7 percent of babies were delivered with a low birthweight and 4.4 percent were delivered preterm. Those figures are significantly less than babies born to mothers not part of WIN Network: Detroit.

• 94 percent of mothers initiated breastfeeding.

• 91 percent of babies were placed in safe sleeping positions in the first three months after birth.

Dr. Kimberlydawn Wisdom, WIN Network founder, spoke about our program with Henry Ford Health System. “It takes a village and that’s what has enabled WIN Network: Detroit to be so impactful,” Dr. Wisdom says. “By addressing some very real social barriers, we’ve gone to the root of the infant mortality crisis. In doing so, Henry Ford’s Women’s Health Services and WIN Network achieved significant health and wellness outcomes for these mothers and their babies. We’re honored to be a recipient of this year’s AHA Dick Davidson NOVA Award.”

Dr. Wisdom says the community health workers play a critical role in fostering relationships with the mothers enrolled in the program as well as with the community-based organizations that provide resources for the mothers.

“Our model empowers the community health workers to connect the mothers to medical, social and economic resources that support equity in birth outcomes and foster maternal empowerment and self-sufficiency,” Dr. Wisdom says.

WIN Network: Detroit is a collaboration of Henry Ford, Detroit Medical Center, Ascension St. John Providence Health, Beaumont Health and other partners of the Detroit Regional Infant Mortality Reduction Task Force. Funding support has been provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, The Kresge Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, March of Dimes – Michigan chapter, The Jewish Fund, University of Michigan’s School of Public Health, DMC Foundation, Rita and Alex Hillman Foundation, Michigan Health Endowment Fund and the Gail and Lois Warden Endowment on Multicultural Health.