Help available for low-income moms

With health care costs skyrocketing, and the number of uninsured growing, the New York City Department of Health has announced that it will be opening a new Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP) site in Queens.
The NFP is a program that sends nurses to the homes of low-income mothers, many of whom are first time parents. It is also available to teens in foster care and to women who are homeless or incarcerated. Eligible Queens residents will be able to receive assistance from experienced nurses during the first two years of their babies’ lives.
The new site is located at 21-26 31st Avenue in Astoria.
Other NFP sites include Harlem, Central Brooklyn and the South Bronx. In Queens an NFP site is located in Jamaica at the Bureau of Maternal, Infant and Reproductive Health located on Bedford Avenue.
Due to the success of these sites, the program will be expanded to East New York, Coney Island, Staten Island, the Lower East Side, and Astoria. This latest expansion boosts NFP’s citywide capacity to 2,600 families.
In his weekly radio address, Mayor Michael Bloomberg spoke about the program’s successes and said, “Now we’re taking NFP to the next level by extending its reach to all five boroughs and more than doubling the number of sites.”
“New York City is a financial hub, a cultural capital, a media mecca, and a center for world-class sports and entertainment. However, at the end of the day, we are also the place where kids grow up, and grandparents grow old. That’s why we’re going to keep working to make New York an even better city for the oldest and youngest among us,” continued Bloomberg.
The Health Department predicts that the expanded NFP sites will provide help for over 1,000 new mothers and their children.
If you are pregnant and will be a mom for the first time, call 3-1-1 and ask about enrolling in the Nurse-Family Partnership. To find out more about NFP, visit www.nyc.gov/health.