Boston, Dec. 08, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Centering Healthcare Institute (CHI) announced today that it has received $10.8 million in philanthropic funding to continue expanding access to its group healthcare models, CenteringPregnancy® and CenteringParenting®, across the United States. One- to three-year grants from Bezos Family Foundation, Richard W. Goldman Family Foundation, Imaginable Futures, Overdeck Family Foundation, Pritzker Children’s Initiative, and Valhalla Charitable Foundation will support the organization during its two-year adaptive plan and allow for the nimbleness necessary to partner with a healthcare system still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic.

This round of funding supports CHI’s ability to transform healthcare delivery and provide better care for pregnant individuals and young children, increasing the opportunity for new families to thrive. An extensive and growing body of research demonstrates that the critical period of health, beginning with prenatal care through the third birthday, provides the foundation for ongoing maternal health and for babies to develop physically, cognitively, emotionally, and socially. Adverse birth outcomes and early life experiences influence parental mental health and child brain development, and have significant implications on future health and developmental outcomes.

“This successful round of funding is a strong testament to the belief these impactful foundations have in CHI and the Centering model,“ said Angie Truesdale, Chief Executive Officer at CHI. “Their continued support augments our efforts to expand access to the Centering model of group healthcare in communities where group care can have the greatest impact and tackle head-on the large inequalities in maternal and child outcomes by race, ethnicity and income.” 

These investments convey confidence in CHI’s adaptive plan to continue to respond to the healthcare system’s changing needs.

“Bezos Family Foundation is proud to support Centering Healthcare Institute,” said Cameron Clark, Program Officer at the Bezos Family Foundation. “The Centering model has been shown to reduce maternal stress, lower the rate of preterm birth, and address stark disparities in birth outcomes for Black women. Our hope is to see this model embraced and expanded across the country.”

With CenteringPregnancy and CenteringParenting models, Centering is the only intervention that offers continuity of care from pregnancy through the critical early childhood period of health and development (P-2+) with a focus on parent activation and empowerment. In over 150 published studies and peer-reviewed articles, CenteringPregnancy has been proven to lower the risk of preterm birth, close the disparity gap in preterm birth between black and white women and improve both visit attendance and patient satisfaction. Recently, CenteringPregnancy was recognized for the third time in a row as a recommended strategy to improve maternal and child health outcomes in the 2022 Prenatal-to-3 (PN-3) State Policy Roadmap. 

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About Centering Healthcare Institute
CHI is a national non-profit organization with a mission to improve health, transform care and disrupt inequitable systems through the Centering group model. Centering combines health assessment, interactive learning and community building to help support positive health behaviors and drive better health outcomes. CenteringPregnancy® and CenteringParenting® provide the highest quality of care to families from pregnancy through early childhood. The CenteringHealthcare® methodology can be applied to other health conditions including groups for diabetes, opioid recovery, chronic pain and other patient populations.