The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services is providing Guilford County with a $150,000 grant to enhance women’s health, which fits in well with the county’s current priority of providing more support to women before and after giving birth.
The initiative will also hopefully enhance the county strong efforts over the last five years to reduce infant mortality in Guilford County.
The “Supporting Women’s Health Services” grant money will allow Guilford County’s health department to continue to fund a “community health worker” for the next three years. That health worker will do things such as provide community outreach and offer classes on health topics largely related to the weeks before and after a woman gives birth – “with a focus on reproductive life planning to increase the number of individuals of reproductive age making appointments in our Family Planning clinics in Greensboro and High Point.”
This funding will also allow the health department to continue to offer extended hours for its family planning clinic, which will run from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. under the arrangement. That will allow clients the ability to visit the clinic outside of normal business hours.
In addition, according to county documents regarding the grant and the health worker, there will be a “strong focus on community outreach on reproductive life planning, and perinatal health promotion will be implemented using an integrated community health worker model.”
This is a continuation of services that the county’s health department conducted under a former state grant program that has since been cut out of the state’s budget.
