Successful Launch of Go Before You Show Campaign
The Stamford Cradle to Career partnership successfully kicked off Go Before You Show, an awareness campaign about prenatal care and maternal health. With over 70 attendees and multiple speakers such as Mayor David Martin, Superintendent Earl Kim, Congressman Jim Himes and United Way of Western CT’s CEO Kim Morgan, the simple two step initiative for a healthy pregnancy was launched. In addition, Dr. Jennifer Calder of the Stamford Health Department, the Commissioner of Public Health, Dr. Raul Pino, and of course, Stamford Cradle to Career’s Infant Health and Development Community Action Network’s (CAN) co-chairs Adele Gordon and Erica Phillips spoke of the importance of prenatal care.
The Infant Health and Development CAN is proud to introduce the campaign to the Stamford community, the first city in Connecticut to promote this effort. Throughout Stamford, the campaign encourages pregnant women to seek prenatal care in the first three months of their pregnancy and connects them to a prenatal care provider as early as possible in their pregnancy for more positive outcomes.
Text4Baby, a free mobile information service designed to promote maternal and child health through text messaging, will also complement the campaign. Women who text BABY (or BEBE in Spanish) to 511411 will receive three free text messages a week related to prenatal care timed to their due date.
The Go Before You Show campaign is sponsored by the SC2C partnership and promoted by the Stamford Health Department, Optimus and Stamford Public Schools.
As part of Stamford’s Cradle to Career Race, Equity and Inclusion initiative, members of the Community Task Force, Executive Team and Communication Network had an opportunity to learn from several organizations’ ongoing efforts at addressing racism. Domus, The Ferguson Library, Building One Community, and Person-to Person each presented the history of their agency, and the changes that have been implemented and achieved over time in combating racism. A gradual and ongoing internal cultural change made these agencies more aware and diverse.
The presentation was meant as an encouragement to other organizations to start a similar process and undergo an internal review of history, staffing and practices. The overall goal of the initiative is to create an open and diverse environment which has a city-wide impact.