AllOne Foundation Awards MFHS $450,000 to Increase Access to Maternity and Mental Health Care

Wilkes-Barre, PA – May 26, 2023: Maternal and Family Health Services (MFHS) was recently awarded $450,000 from the AllOne Foundation to improve access to comprehensive, quality health care for women and children in Northeastern Pennsylvania. The funding from AllOne Foundation supports the establishment of a maternity medical home model of care at MFHS clinics in Scranton and Hazleton, and increasing access to mental and behavioral health care. 

“MFHS has been dedicated to meeting the needs of the most vulnerable people in our community for over 50 years, and our move towards a maternity medical home model of care is the next logical step in that work,” says Maria Montoro Edwards, PhD, MFHS President and CEO, “Families in need often don’t have the resources to get to appointments with a multitude of providers, and this new model of care eases that burden. MFHS thanks the AllOne Foundation for supporting MFHS in connecting the most vulnerable in our community with life changing health care.”

The maternity medical home is an innovative model that is not currently available in Pennsylvania and will increase the range of services offered at the MFHS Scranton and Hazleton sites to include onsite nutrition services, reproductive health care, evidence based nurse home visiting, obstetric care, fetal imaging, onsite labs and pharmacy services, substance/opioid use disorder care management, oral health triage and navigating, psychosocial assessment, and development of a team-focused and interdisciplinary plan of care.

The mental and behavioral health component of the AllOne Foundation funding will address multi-generational negative public health impacts of maternal depression. MFHS launched the evidenced-based Moving Beyond Depression (MBD) model for both clients enrolled in the MFHS Nurse-Family Partnership program. MBD was developed by Every Child Succeeds® at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, has been rigorously tested, and was named a best practice by the Association for Maternal and Child Health Programs.

To learn more about the programs MFHS offers, or to make an appointment, please visit MFHS.org or call 1-800-367-6347.

The mission of AllOne Foundation & Charities is to make a real and substantive impact on the health and welfare of the people of Northeastern and North Central Pennsylvania by improving access to, affordability of and quality of healthcare.   Website: www.allonefoundations.org.

Pictures (left to right): John Cosgrove, CEO of AllOne Foundation and Charities; Pete Danchack, Chair of AllOne Charities; Maria Montoro Edwards, PhD, President and CEO of Maternal and Family Health Services; Shannon Hayward, Chief Operating Officer of Maternal and Family Health Services.