Community Voice and Compassion

Jenna Paritee: My name is Jenna Paritee, and I am the Communications Coordinator for the Healthy Start Technical Assistance and Support Center, also known as Healthy Start TASC. Here at Healthy Start TASC, we provide training and technical assistance to support Healthy Start, Healthy Start  – Enhanced, and Catalyst grantees in improving their service delivery, meeting outcome measures, and building their project’s ability to improve maternal and infant health outcomes and prevent infant death. There are 115 Healthy Start sites that the TASC supports, and The Magnolia Project is one of them. Today, I will be speaking with Marsha Davis, who is the Project Director for The Magnolia Project. 

Jenna Paritee: What is the Magnolia Project?  

Marsha Davis: The Magnolia Project is a specialty federal initiative that improves the health and well-being of women, especially during their childbearing years. We serve five zip codes in Jacksonville, Duval County, Florida.  

Jenna Paritee: I was looking on the website, and it was talking about how, within the years of 2014 to 2019 that it was found that women who participated in The Magnolia Project had significantly better outcomes in comparison to the overall population in Duval County. In your view, what aspects of the Magnolia Project contributed to the success?  

Marsha Davis: The Magnolia Project participants had a 72.5% lower infant mortality rate when compared to the general population of Black women in Duval County. Also, available evidence suggests that participation by high-risk women in the program may lower the incidence of infant mortality and low birth weight babies. 

Participants also make greater use of family planning methods than those who don’t participate in the program. And the Magnolia Project has been a trusted cornerstone of the community it serves for more than 25 years, so that’s a bonus as well. We also provide services from easily accessible neighborhood sites. 

We also incorporate group-based health education and parenting activities. We do a centering healthcare model. We build social supports for participants. The Magnolia Project has provided group education classes since its inception, which have informed participants on a variety of health and parenting topics, while also allowing participants to form supportive connections with other group members. We have it available where they’re able to have social supports in one or many areas, especially buffering around toxic stress.  

Jenna Paritee: As you were talking, I’m thinking more about the group-based education services that you were talking about. Is there any topic [00:03:00] specifically, I know you just said toxic stress, but any other topics that you found are kind of the most popular classes?  

Marsha Davis: Well, we do a lot of safe sleep. We want to make sure that children that the babies have their own safe sleep environment. We do car safety, car seat safety. 

We do nutrition. With our nutrition classes, we focus on those chronic diseases: obesity, high blood pressure, and diabetes. And so, we have a chef who does nutrition demonstrations. And the focal point of that is to provide education on those food items, those ingredients, those seasonings, those different things that would help to lower the high blood pressure and the obesity, and even with diabetes, hypertension, and obesity, we do a lot of focus groups. They’re held on different variety of topics. And we do that on a regular basis because the community voice matters. We engage the community and stakeholders through a variety of methods to solicit their feedback on both the needs and services of the project. We use a lot of community and program-specific surveys, and they’re conducted to better understand behaviors, utilization, and satisfaction with the services that we provide. 

The Magnolia Project also has a community consortium that includes program participants and is working on multiyear action plans. The consortium, it engages both the participants and the community members in all stages of the plan: development and implementation. The consortium members are also involved in activities like vetting the marketing materials prior to distribution and developing videos for social media.  

Jenna Paritee: Could you tell me more about that committee?  

Marsha Davis: We have a FIMR that’s under the Northeast Florida Healthy Start Coalition, which is the Fetal and Infant Mortality Review. And with that, they meet monthly to talk about [00:05:00] the overall cases for FIMR. Those recommendations from FIMR go to a specific community action group. And under that group, it focuses on those contributing factors: maternal mortality [and] infant mortality. And so that group utilizes some of our participants who have graduated from the program or are currently in the program, as well as participates in the Make a Difference Leadership Academy. They would go through the program, and they would be referred to the Make a Difference Leadership Academy, which is a grassroots leadership program. Training that they would go through talking about their public speaking and knowing their style of leadership, going through how to conduct a meeting, all of those things that would help them to be able to move into the community consortium, which now they’re able to guide the meetings and they’re able to get committees and other members of the community together to focus on those specific areas.  

Jenna Paritee: Who are your professional or personal inspirations?  

Marsha Davis: I’ll utilize our CEO. Her name is Faye Johnson, and she is the CEO of the Northeast Florida Healthy Start Coalition. One of the things that I really like about her and am inspired by is her heart for the people. 

Ms. Johnson actually used to be the Project Director of The Magnolia Project prior to me becoming the Project Director. Just being able to follow her lead, being able to have worked with her for at least 20 years, if not more than that. And again, seeing her heart, seeing her compassion for the people, seeing how when we’re talking about, you know, things that go on in the community, things that go on with the project, how just as it is important to me, it’s equally as important to her to make sure that we have the community, their involvement, making sure that they have a voice, making sure that They’re able to share and, you know, give us suggestions on things that we’re doing well and things that we need to change. 

So, seeing her model that, you know, as well as, again, her compassion for the people. Not just the people that we serve, but even the staff, the team, the team members under the coalition. She’s just really a community leader, a community advocate. Even though her position has changed, she has never changed. 

Jenna Paritee: Is there anything before we wrap up that I didn’t ask you about that you want to share about The Magnolia Project or just your thoughts on the impact of Healthy Start for a community?  

Marsha Davis: I’m not sure if I mentioned when you asked about The Magnolia Project that we are nationally recognized. We’re a leader in effective interventions, development, implementation, and evaluation. Our goal is to reduce disparities in infant mortality and to improve pre- and inter-conception health using the life course approach. So that’s one of those things that is unique about the Magnolia Project. We also work to address risk factors that impact women’s health and may affect a current or future pregnancy. The overall goal is to help them have a healthy birth outcome. And even if they decide not to have any children, but to make sure that they’re healthy, that way if they decide to, they’ll have a greater chance of having a healthy birth outcome. 

We also address things like, and I think we talked about the toxic stress, the pregnancy intervals. The nutrition, substance abuse, psychosocial problems, family planning, and other challenges women face. We also have a special focus on preconception health.  

Which, you know, again, whether they decide to or not, that was the most unique thing about The Magnolia Project when we started in 1999. Our main focus was on preconception health. Later, the prenatals were added in too. Not that we didn’t serve prenatals at that time, but our focus in all ways is, and still one of our main focuses is, to make sure that women are healthy before they get pregnant or in between pregnancies.[00:09:00]  

We offer case management services, group classes, and clinical services for women, again before, during, and after pregnancy, and their male partners. So, I don’t want to leave that out. We also work with those men who are attached to the ladies who are in the service. Our goal is to work with the families, of course, the children, whether they choose to have them or not. 

So, I just want to make sure that I say that again because preconception of health is important. But we work with those men who are attached to those ladies and those babies who are in the program. So, a lot of times we were asked in the past, “What do you provide for the men?” So now we have a fatherhood coach, or have that position available, in order to assist those men who are attached to those ladies in the program. 

They can go through those same group classes that I mentioned. They have specific curriculum, 24:7 dads boot camps for new dads, just different curriculums that they can go through. And in other areas where they’re receiving information on how to support that woman, and even getting the help and assistance that they need. 

So, we always want to make sure that we’re highlighting those areas. Additional supplemental services that we have, we provide doula services for those ladies. Make sure that they are assigned to a case manager, that they will receive a doula also, if they’re interested, of course, but then that doula is able to follow them through the pregnancy, go through, talk about a birthing plan, talk about their goals for this pregnancy, making sure that they’re referring them back to their medical provider for any questions that they may have, meeting them at the doctor’s office at their appointments. 

Also being there, being available, and accessible when they get ready to deliver. Going through different strategies and techniques and comfort measures that they’re able to utilize before, you know, during labor, because that’s a big thing. And then actually providing postpartum support to them as well. 

We have community health workers who go out into the community and provide services and engage the ladies for project services. Tell them more about what we do at The Magnolia Project with our two locations -we have two locations in Jacksonville, and just making sure that they’re aware. Another unique thing about it is not only do we have the case managers who are going into the homes to see the moms, but the community health workers are out in the community providing group education in the apartment complexes where the families live, at community centers in the area. That way, they don’t have to try to make it to, because we know transportation is a big area of focus. And so, we go where they are, and the community health workers are really strong in the community in order to meet the ladies where they are. The community education classes, the behavior health, all of that complement the core services that we provide at The Magnolia Project. 

Jenna Paritee: Thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you have a wonderful day, and make sure to follow Healthy Start TASC @hs_tasc on Instagram for future updates.