Groundwork Ohio to Submit Testimony Today for ODH Budget Funding to Support Pregnant Women, Young Children, and Their Families
Testimony Calls on ODH and State Legislature to Expand Investments in Voluntary Evidence-Based Home Visiting Services to Serve More Ohio Families
COLUMBUS, OH -- Today, Groundwork Ohio -- the state’s leading advocacy organization focused on issues impacting the prenatal period to age five -- will submit testimony on Ohio’s FY 2022-2023 budget in support of funding for the Ohio Department of Health’s (ODH) services and initiatives that support pregnant women, young children, and their families. Groundwork Ohio is also calling on ODH and the Ohio legislature to preserve and expand investments in Help Me Grow, Ohio’s voluntary evidence-based home visiting program, to serve more families.
Ohio has made an incredible effort over the past two years to strengthen and expand evidence-based home visiting services. As Lynanne Gutierrez, Groundwork Ohio’s Assistant Director and Legal Counsel, states in her prepared testimony, now is the time to double down on critical efforts to serve more families with evidence-based home visiting:
“Healthy moms are the foundation of healthy children. Whether infants are born healthy and with the potential to thrive as they grow greatly depends on their mother’s well-being. To have a healthy pregnancy and positive birth outcomes, women and their infants require access to appropriate clinical and non-clinical services before, during, and after birth… Expanding home visiting services can help improve outcomes for both mom and baby.”
In the testimony, Groundwork Ohio calls on the Ohio House Finance Subcommittee on Health and Human Services to double Governor Mike DeWine’s proposed increase to Help Me Grow investment through an additional $1.9 million over the biennium beyond the current proposal. This will allow the program to serve 1,000 additional children during the upcoming biennium. The testimony also encourages ODH to leverage federal resources to reach more families, and to collect data to analyze outcomes and evaluate programs from an equity lens.
To read Groundwork Ohio’s full testimony to the Finance Subcommittee on Health and Human Services regarding ODH, please see the attached document.
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Ohio Groundwork Ohio is a committed, nonpartisan public-policy research and advocacy organization formed in 2004 that champions high-quality early learning and healthy development strategies from the prenatal period to age five, that lay a strong foundation for Ohio kids, families and communities. Learn more about Groundwork Ohio at groundworkohio.org and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.