Applying Global Health Lessons to Syracuse, New York

This chapter describes efforts to bring lessons from international health back to Syracuse, New York. It describes Syracuse Healthy Start (SHS), which brought together over thirty agencies to coordinate and enhance the care of pregnant women and families with infants throughout Syracuse. The chapter states that SHS has been successful in three key areas. First, pregnant inmates receive high-quality prenatal services and integrated case management, helping many to give birth to healthy infants. Second, pregnant and parenting teens in Syracuse have generally good birth outcomes and lower rates of infant death than adult women. Third, adult women who had not graduated from high school and were served by SHS were found to have significantly lower rates of postneonatal infant death than comparable women who were not SHS participants.