UAMS Taking Group Prenatal Care on the Road through CenteringPregnancy®
| FAYETTEVILLE — The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences’ (UAMS) Office of Community Health & Research, recently launched a mobile CenteringPregnancy® program, a group prenatal program that is headed to medically underserved areas across Arkansas.
CenteringPregnancy® is prenatal care that includes a woman’s regular health checkup, along with extra time for group learning and sharing. The program replaces the mother’s traditional 15-minute obstetrician visits with 10 group sessions, each between 90 minutes and two hours long, allowing for more than 10 times the amount of time normally spent with their provider. The program recently launched in Madison County, with plans to launch soon in Helena-West Helena.
“We’re very excited to begin utilizing our mobile health clinics to offer CenteringPregnancy® and provide patient-centered prenatal care throughout Arkansas,” said Kelly Conroy, an assistant director leading UAMS Community Health & Research’s mobile health initiatives. “Our mobile health clinics give us the ability to meet the patient where they are — literally. The ability to deliver this evidence-based program in some of the most rural and medically underserved areas of Arkansas will help to improve the health outcomes of pregnant women, babies and families by bringing care and support to where it is most needed.”
CenteringPregnancy® has been proven to improve patient understanding, engagement and satisfaction with their health care experience, while decreasing preterm birth rates and other health disparities and increasing breastfeeding rates, appropriate gestational weight gain and other healthy outcomes of the pregnancy.
For more information about CenteringPregnancy® or UAMS Community Health & Research’s Family Wellness programs, visit nwa.uams.edu/chr/familywellness.
The UAMS Northwest Regional Campus includes 329 medical, pharmacy, nursing and health professions students, 66 medical and pharmacy residents, and two sports medicine fellows. The campus has nine clinics including a student-led clinic, orthopaedics and sports medicine, and physical, occupational and speech therapy. Faculty conduct research to reduce health disparities.
UAMS is the state’s only health sciences university, with colleges of Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, Health Professions and Public Health; a graduate school; a hospital; a main campus in Little Rock; a Northwest Arkansas regional campus in Fayetteville; a statewide network of regional campuses; and seven institutes: the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute, Jackson T. Stephens Spine & Neurosciences Institute, Harvey & Bernice Jones Eye Institute, Psychiatric Research Institute, Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging, Translational Research Institute and Institute for Digital Health & Innovation. UAMS includes UAMS Health, a statewide health system that encompasses all of UAMS’ clinical enterprise. UAMS is the only adult Level 1 trauma center in the state. UAMS has 3,240 students, 913 medical residents and fellows, and five dental residents. It is the state’s largest public employer with more than 11,000 employees, including 1,200 physicians who provide care to patients at UAMS, its regional campuses, Arkansas Children’s, the VA Medical Center and Baptist Health. Visit www.uams.edu or www.uamshealth.com. Find us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or Instagram.