Chair Lee on $20M perinatal mental health investment

And then my last question related to your testimony is you had mentioned that there's a $20 million investment in perinatal and early childhood mental health services, as well as the expansion of our nurse family partnership program.

So just wanted to know if you go a little bit more into detail of what that $20 million is actually going towards.

Yeah, really good question.

I'm going to give some high-level points on this, and then I want to have Deputy Commissioner Lydia Leniak join us to get into the details a little bit.

So, first of all, this is an expansion of the NFP program, and it's called NFPX.

Essentially, it increases the eligibility.

window for families who can leverage this service.

We thought that, you know, of course we don't want to mess with the secret sauce of NFP.

However, we thought it was important to try and increase the aperture of who could be included in the program, so increase eligibility.

And then the second component is increasing resources for perinatal mental health issues.

We know that one of the things that's killing black and brown women in this city who are recently postpartum, it's actually not things like, you know,

hemorrhage or pulmonary embolism, it's actually mental health issues, substance use issues.

So we're surging resources in that capacity.

So I'm going to hand it to Lydia to share a little bit more.

Do you affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth before the committee and to respond honestly to the council member question?

Yes.

You may begin.

So thank you for your question.

So the Nurse Family Partnership Program is a program that pairs pregnant people and new parents with a nurse until the child's second birthday.

So traditionally, the eligibility criteria for that program was first-time pregnant people up to the third trimester.

With this expansion, we are broadening the eligibility criteria to include any pregnant person, even with a prior birth, up until the birth of the child.

And we know from research that's been done in this area that parents who have multiple children, right, have additional stressors.

And so we're really excited about offering this intervention to additional families.

Ultimately, through this expansion, this is an expansion of this eligibility criteria across all of our 15 teams that deliver Nurse Family Partnership Program.

In addition, as part of the

perinatal and early childhood mental health expansion.

We are going to be increasing capacity at our perinatal mental health clinics.

And also investing in professional development as well as

working with academic institutions because we know one of the findings of our maternal mortality review committee is that there's a workforce shortage in this area.

And so this is another way that we are sort of listening to the recommendations that are being made to us and expanding services in these key areas.

That's actually great to hear, because as you know, a lot of immigrant communities, black and brown communities, either are not believed when they say certain things that they're experiencing, or

they don't feel that they want to cause trouble and so therefore don't report to the doctors.

I mean, that's how one of my friend's sisters passed away shortly after she gave birth.

So I'm glad to hear that it's not just the first pregnancy, because as we know, each pregnancy is very different.

And so it's great that you're expanding it to any pregnancy, so I'm happy to hear about that.