Martin County Healthy Start Coalition

Since February 1993, the Martin County Healthy Start Coalition has provided support and education to pregnant women and infants. It arose from Governor Lawton Chiles’ Florida Healthy Start initiative, which he signed into law in 1991.

Governor and First Lady Chiles met with a group of community leaders and challenged them to form local coalitions to help reduce Florida’s alarmingly high infant mortality rate. They believed that every child deserved a healthy start in life and worked with communities to build strong local coalitions to provide high-quality prenatal care for mothers and child health care.

Through this legislation, Healthy Start Coalitions were formed throughout the state to create a system of care for expectant mothers. The Healthy Start legislation requires a universal risk screening for all pregnant women and newborn infants throughout the state to determine if they are at risk of poor birth, health, and developmental outcomes, and then intervenes with interventions to mitigate these risks.

There are currently 32 Healthy Start Coalitions throughout the state that provide risk screenings, prenatal care, parenting support, counseling, and other services to expectant mothers.