Need: A higher percentage of Tennesseans live in poverty than the national average. Much of this poverty is rural. Poverty and its effects are especially prevalent among the state’s 1.8 million children, with 18% living below the poverty line and 8.2% in extreme poverty. Poverty places children at risk developmentally.

Purpose: To train local Maternal and Infant Health Outreach Workers in Tennessee and neighboring states to screen infants and toddlers for delays and behavioral concerns. To assist Outreach Workers and families through technical assistance and supports.

Innovations: Adaptation of screening methods for use by peer paraprofessionals, including new methods for screening very young children with autism being developed by the Treatment and Research Institute for Autism Spectrum Disorders.

Description: The Maternal and Infant Health Outreach Workers (MIHOW) program operates in 21 high poverty, mostly rural communities in isolated regions of the Appalachian mountains of Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, Louisiana, and the Mississippi Delta. MIHOW improves child and family health through peer mentoring: local women serve as mentors to mothers during monthly home visits from pregnancy until the child is 3 years old. The Vanderbilt Kennedy Center for Excellence is partnering with MHOW to increase MIHOW’s screening, health outcomes, and family support for young children with disabilities. A program of Vanderbilt’s Center for Health Services since 1982, this multiple award-winning program has served over 10,000 families and trained more than 300 family outreach workers.

Where:
Vanderbilt Center for Health Services

Directors:
Minda Lazarov, MIHOW Director, Center for Health Services

Terri Urbano, Ph.D., M.P.H., R.N., University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities  

Contact:
Center for Health Services                   (615) 343-4513
                                                       

University Center for Excellence            (615) 322-4999
                                                       

See additional information about MIHOW