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MOMS Partnership® Featured in NASEM Report as 'Promising Model'

July 26, 2019

The MOMS Partnership® is identified as a "Promising Model" in a report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine titled, "Vibrant and Healthy Kids: Aligning Science, Practice, and Policy to Advance Health Equity."

The 503-page report, released July 25, outlines steps needed to move children who are at risk for negative outcomes toward positive health trajectories and reduce health disparities.

The MOMS Partnership is an evidence-based, community-driven program that offers mental health and trauma-related services and parenting and job readiness programs to single mothers in at-risk neighborhoods in New Haven. The program provides stress management and personal skills for work success courses and parent coaching. Services are provided in locations where participants live, including grocery stores, shelters, community colleges, libraries, and Head Start and Early Head Start programs.

Megan Smith, DrPH, MPH, Associate Professor of Psychiatry and in the Child Study Center, is Director of the MOMS Partnership.

MOMS Partnership is working to implement its programs in other locations, including Washington, DC., Vermont, and Kentucky. Similar efforts are planned for Bridgeport, CT., and New York City.

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MOMS Partnership®: Promising Model

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine identified the MOMS® Partnership as a "Promising Model" in a recent report.

Here is the text:

"Based in New Haven, Connecticut, the MOMS Partnership is an evidence-based, community driven initiative that offers mental health and trauma-related services and parenting and job readiness programs to single mothers in at-risk neighborhoods (Center on the Developing Child, 2019). The program recruits participants by “meeting” mothers at locations they frequent (i.e., grocery stores, laundromats, shelters, community colleges, libraries, and nail and hair salons) (White et al., 2018). The program’s mission is “to reduce depressive symptoms and increase social and economic mobility among overburdened, under-resourced mothers, thereby strengthening generations of families to flourish and succeed” (MOMS Partnership, n.d.-c).

Beginning in 2010 and in partnership with mothers and community partners, the program has conducted surveys to identify and understand the needs of pregnant women, parents, other caregivers, and families in the community (Smith, 2018). Findings from more than 4,000 interviews have directly informed the design of the program. The program delivers a “bundle” of local services, including those to build skills (e.g., for stress management and work success), community mental health ambassadors, referral to local services and resources, and social networks and support (Smith, 2018).

The program has demonstrated promising initial outcomes, including findings from a 2012–2016 RCT in New Haven public housing and multigenerational outcomes from two quasi-experimental studies (Smith, 2018). Evaluation of the program has shown that at completion, 76 percent of participants have fewer depressive symptoms and participants experience a 67 percent decrease in parenting stress (MOMS Partnership, n.d.-a).

Beginning in 2019, the MOMS Partnership will replicate its program in Washington, DC, through a partnership with the DC Department of Human Services and via DC’s TANF program (Clayton et al., 2018; MOMS Partnership, n.d.-b). The MOMS Partnership has also collaborated with Vermont Reach Up, that state’s TANF program, to replicate the program in Vermont by 2020."