On Aug. 27, Daneen Schroder, the vice president for business development and member services at The Hospital & Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania (HAP), presented Penn State Health St. Joseph with the 2015 HAP Community Champions Achievement Award for its Centering Pregnancy program, which improves the care given to pregnant moms to ensure better deliveries and healthier newborns.
Schroder said Penn State Health St. Joseph “recognized an important opportunity to address the issue of preterm births and low birth weight infants within the community after its 2013 Community Health Needs Assessment revealed that most women were receiving late or no prenatal care, and the high teen birth rate was of particular concern.”
Following the study, coordinated with the United Way of Berks, the Berks County Community Foundation and Reading Health System, St. Joseph set a goal to enroll at least 60 percent of eligible prenatal patients into its new Centering Pregnancy program.
The program, led by Nurse Navigator Kimberly Hunter, was created to focus on assessment, education and support and to promote a model of care focused on greater patient engagement, personal empowerment and community-building among the participants.
“Using elements that were defined by the Centering Healthcare Institute, St. Joseph’s centering model of care provided the four initial cohorts of pregnant women with educational topics like nutrition, dental health, breastfeeding, infant care, pain management during labor and transitioning into parenthood,” said Schroder during a presentation to the hospital’s leadership team Thursday. “Recognizing your community may have a host of needs, your hospital partnered with social service agencies to help individuals receive care across the full continuum.”
Schroder called the initiative a “best practice that can be used and adapted for the future, and has been shared to help other facilities provide the highest quality and safest care to their patients.”
St. Joseph is no stranger to these awards, as last year the hospital was honored with an Achievement Award for its breast cancer screening outreach to the Latino community.