Partnerships
Empower Health USA partners with organizations by offering expertise and operational resources. Our unique technology and communications framework provides scalability for goals and programs increasing reach and impact. Meharry Medical College is partnering with Empower Health USA for their 'Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies' program.
'Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies' Program
Avoiding unintended opioid & alcohol pregnancies through a comprehensive wellness and recovery program enabling at-risk women to choose a path to a healthy baby.
Meharry & Partners
Located in Nashville, Tennessee, Meharry Medical College is one of the nation’s oldest and largest historically black academic health science centers dedicated to educating physicians, dentists, researchers, and health policy experts.
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Meharry Medical College has a diverse clinical enterprise focusing its efforts on the disadvantaged and underserved. Service lines include primary care, women’s health, and comprehensive mental health and substance abuse disorder treatment services.
Meharry & Empower Health have worked together for 2 years to develop the HMHB program.
Leaders, Partners and Advocates:
MIDDLE TN
The Impact of Addiction on Child Welfare
2 out of 3 children under the age of 1 placed in foster care in TN in 2019, were removed from their homes due to Drug and Alcohol abuse in the family (66.8%)
A Critical Humanitarian and Fiscal Challenge
Video from NBC News affiliate: WVLT in Knoxville, TN
(1 min. 54 sec.)
According to medical experts and caregivers, drug-exposed children and their foster care parents face major lifelong challenges.
Video from Tennessee House of Representatives (53 sec.)
Comptroller Wilson speaking to the Tennessee House of Representatives on the major fiscal threats that result from the expanding addiction crisis.
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“We'll have a real serious financial situation … and almost certainly are looking at substantially and I mean substantially, multiples of our current rates of taxation.”
The HMHB Goal
The goal of the Meharry Medical College & Partners 'Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies' (HMHB) Program is to provide a statewide solution to a humanitarian crisis of enormous financial and community costs resulting from over 11,000 annual unintended drug and alcohol impacted pregnancies. Often, these newborns are classified as low birth weight or pre-term and/or diagnosed with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) or Neonatal Abstinent Syndrome (NAS). Many of these children typically require lifelong mental, physical, behavioral, social and other special services from birth throughout adulthood.
HMHB’s targeted population is 91,000 women dependent on drugs and/or alcohol. HMHB’s goal is to increase access to services through education, promote increased utilization of services through navigation, and improve both short-term and long-term clinical and financial outcomes, enabling healthy women to have healthy babies at the right time.
Field Trial
HMHB’s program builds trust with women as demonstrated through actual field trials in East TN helping over 800 women. Once enrolled, our program offers women a Total Wellness Recovery Solution which includes addressing their necessary healthcare and Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) needs.
Primary Prevention
HMHB’s program incorporates primary prevention with interventions prior to a mother becoming pregnant. Almost all State and Federal funded programs only address secondary and tertiary treatments, i.e. during pregnancy and postpartum. HMHB offers a total Wellness solution, addressing all existing comorbidities and social determinates of health so that women may have the healthiest babies possible at the right time.