Our Story

Our Mission

Baltimore Healthy Start Inc is committed to reducing infant mortality by utilizing a Life Course Perspective for improving the health and well-being of women and their families through the provision of comprehensive, supportive services offered in the communities where they live.

The goal is to prevent infant mortality - the death of an infant before the age of one.

From the Doorstep, to the First Step and through the Lifecourse....

Baltimore Healthy Start, Inc. (BHSI), a 501(c) 3 non-profit corporation, was established by the Baltimore City Health Department in 1991 to implement the original federal healthy start infant mortality reduction initiative. Now 21 years later BHSI is a leader among non-profit organizations working to reduce infant mortality by providing direct services to the most vulnerable citizens in Baltimore - pregnant and postpartum women, and their infants living in socially, economically and medically depressed communities.

Thirty-three percent of the 98%-African-American residents in Healthy Start's targeted communities live in poverty with a median income of $22,629 (vs $30,078 for Baltimore City ) and more than half did not graduate high school.

Healthy Start recruits pregnant and postpartum women with a child less than six months, who live in one of the targeted communities. New enrollees are connected to a Neighborhood Health Advocate (NHA) who performs home visits and provides necessary support to clients until the client's child is 24 months. Because one in four babies, born at very low birth weight (weighing less than 3.3. pounds), dies before the age of one, Healthy Start works to provide families the necessary support to deliver full term healthy babies.