The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven has received a $5.5 million federal boost to support young families.
The foundation’s Healthy Start initiative helps families with infants with food, supplies, transportation, housing and more.
Natasha Ray, the program’s director, said the award will allow them to continue serving and growing the community.
“When we first received this award in 1997, our infant mortality rates were between 20 and 22% per 100 births,” Ray said. “Our current infant mortality rate is 10.8. To be eligible for this award for infant mortality rates, it has to be 15.4. So while yes, it took almost 30 years to get that number in half.”
Ray said it’s the first time in the program’s 27-year history that the community’s infant mortality rates were “too low” to qualify for the award.
However, the community's preterm and low birth rates, as well as maternal morbidity rates, qualified them for federal support.
“We have done a lot, and there's so much more to do,” Ray added.
Robert Farrow Jr. said he and his three children have benefited from the program.
“I believe that New Haven Healthy Start is, in the name of what it is, a healthy start,” Farrow said. “Not many people from where I'm from have a healthy start. They have an okay start. They have a mediocre start. Unfortunately, that start doesn't lead them to where they need to be as fathers.”
U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro and U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) joined CFGNH leaders and community members on Monday morning to celebrate the funding.
New Haven Healthy Start has already received $1 million of the $5.5 million—continued funding will be subject to annual congressional approval.
“By God, we are going to ensure that it is funded at this level, if not more, and I guarantee you that that will be the case if I were able to get the gavel back on the House Appropriations Committee next Congress,” DeLauro said, who helped secure the money.
