Elaine Scarbrough, executive director of the Anson County Partnership for Children, appeared before county commissioners last week to ask for funding of a program that could possibly greatly improve pregnancy outcomes and reduce the number of teen pregnancies.

Although the county will provide only a portion of the funding, Scarborough said the program could benefit Anson County for many years to come.

Through the Nurse Family Partnership, a registered nurse will visit the home of a low-income first-time mother to provide medical care, support and the knowledge the mother needs to provide the best care possible for her baby. The nurse will visit regularly until the child is 2 years of age.

Anson will actually partner with Montgomery County for the NFP program, Scarborough explained, and there will be a RN in each county, serving 25 families each.

The RNs are part of what makes the program expensive, but also effective. “It will be a process to get all the needed funding,” Scarborough said. “And we’re only asking the county to fund $25,000 of it.”

Montgomery County will also help fund a portion of the program.

Scarborough shared the following statistics with the Anson County Commissioners at their meeting last week:

“Across North Carolina, initial results from NFP have shown that:

  • 89 percent of babies were born full term, and 89 percent were born at a healthy weight (at or above 2,500 grams/5.5 pounds).
  • 72 percent of NFP mothers had no subsequent pregnancies at program completion (2.5 years). Comparatively, in a national study of low-income moms, 39 percent of pregnancies occurred within 18 months of a previous birth.
  • 44 percent of mothers who entered the program without a high school diploma or GED have since earned one. Another 26 percent are working to obtain one.”

She also shared that Anson County tends to have a higher percentage of pre-term pregnancies, low birth weight babies and mothers who smoke during pregnancy than the state as a whole. Also, only 53.8 percent of babies born in 2013 in Anson County were breastfed, compared to 77.1 percent statewide. Anson also has a higher percentage of mothers under the age of 18, 4.2 percent, than the state average of 2.1 percent.

There are three main goals to bringing the NFP program to Anson County, Scarborough said: to improve pregnancy outcomes, improve child health and development, and improve the economic self-sufficiency of families.

“For every dollar invested in NFP programs,” Scarborough added, “there is a $5 return on that investment. This represents the opportunity for our young mothers to have a second chance.”