Bill B

Mark, please add some music to our conversation here. What are some of your own thoughts about what we have been discussing?

Mark

Actually, I was going to go in a different direction. My wife’s a public health nurse. Jack you may know about this program. It operates in Colorado. It’s called the Nurse Family Partnership. It was begun about 20 years ago in Denver, looking for a way to decrease emergency room visits postpartum. My wife was frustrated with ward medicine. She went back to get her BSN, which automatically in California confers a public health nurse status as well. She found out about this program, which is very rewarding. It required a year and a half in person initially, but it’s one of the few federal programs that has shown a return of seven or eight dollars for every dollar invested. And just providing education, they follow first-time mothers through their pregnancy and for the baby’s first two years of life. Each nurse in this program has 25 mother-baby pairs. This program has shown a decrease by over 90 percent in just one metric, emergency room visits postpartum. Data is still being collected.

So, I was just thinking in terms of our discussion. Periodically, they meet regionally in person and then on Zoom nationally. But they have a requirement that at a minimum of two years, they meet in person in Denver. Like you were all saying, there is a blossoming. They come up with different perspectives on what works and what doesn’t work so much. This helps them improve. It’s already a very successful program, but even to make incremental gains is very beneficial. So I’m sorry I’m not adding any music. I live with a person who’s doing an incredible job of decreasing what’s of concern I’m sure everywhere across the board. That is the clogging of our emergency rooms—using it as their primary care facility. People participating in this program have a lot more education. Not to mention that it’s not just ER visits. They uncover a lot of mental health issues and domestic violence issues.

Jack

And this program increases the interval between children as well. Yes, absolutely. Which is probably one of the major long-term effects that it has.