York College Faculty Receive Grant to Evaluate Effectiveness of Connections for a Healthy Pregnancy Program
A powerful new partnership between York College and Family First Health is helping improve maternal health outcomes in York’s growing Haitian community.
Dr. Klaudia J. Cwiekala-Lewis, Ph.D., RN, PHNA-BC, Associate Professor of Nursing, and Brandon Parkyn, MSN, APRN, FNP-C, Graduate Adjunct Faculty, were recently awarded a $10,000 grant from Family First Health (FFH), in collaboration with the Center for Community Engagement (CCE).
The grant will be used to evaluate the effectiveness of FFH’s Connections for a Healthy Pregnancy program, which was started in 2017 and aims to support expectant mothers and assist them in having healthy, successful pregnancies.
“As a result of grant funding received in 2017, the program was created to combat the disparate level of low-birth-weight babies in York City by implementing Community Health Workers to connect with pregnant women facing increased health or social needs and link them to needed services,” said Jennifer Moubray, MSW, Senior Director of Community Health Programs at FFH.
Specifically, the program focuses on supporting expectant mothers within the Haitian population in York City.
“According to research studies conducted in Haiti and the United States, Haitian women are among the Black women experiencing disproportionate maternal outcomes,” Moubray continued. “Additional data show the rapid increase in the number of Haitian pregnant women in York.”
Since the program’s creation and continued evolution to meet the community’s needs, FFH recently received grant funding to expand the Connections for a Healthy Pregnancy program. The team is using the opportunity to seek assistance in reviewing and evaluating the program’s data and outcomes to determine its effectiveness and identify next steps.
FFH reached out to several institutions for proposals. With the help of former Provost Dr. Patrice DiQuinzio, the CCE identified faculty who had research expertise aligned with FFH’s needs and were interested in putting a proposal together.
One of the faculty members was Dr. Lewis, recognized for her extensive background in nursing and public health, as well as for her teaching of community and public health courses within York College’s Nursing Department. She is also an Advanced Public Health Nurse–Board Certified (PHNA-BC) through the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC). When Dr. DiQuinzio asked Dr. Lewis to serve, she reached out to Parkyn, who was working as a family nurse practitioner and adjunct faculty member in York College’s family nurse practitioner program.
“I reached out to him because we had worked together before, and I knew he had strong statistical skills,” Dr. Lewis said.
Together, they wrote a proposal that the CCE sent to FFH, and they were chosen.
FFH is seeking program assessment from the YCP nursing faculty to demonstrate that the interventions in place are effectively improving health outcomes for the people they serve – essentially, an assessment of the program’s outcomes.
If the program evaluation results are positive, Dr. Lewis and FFH hope to see the following outcomes for the Haitian women participating in the program:
Increased breastfeeding rates
Increased birth weight
Decreased incidence of pre-viable or pre-term births leading to child death
Increased compliance with postpartum visits for both mother and child
Increased adherence to childhood immunization schedules
Improved adherence to well-child care visit schedules
“They’re looking at what kind of social determinants of health are having an impact on the success of the women who are taking care of the babies in our community from this particular population,” Dr. Lewis said.
Now that they have the data, Dr. Lewis and Parkyn will spend time reviewing and organizing it to determine if the participants achieved the desired results. They will continue to meet with FFH with the goal of having the organized data ready for delivery by Summer 2026.
The partnership between York College, FFH, and the CCE made this remarkable opportunity possible, demonstrating that collaboration is crucial to fostering meaningful change.
To Carly Legg Wood, Executive Director of the Center for Community Engagement, this is a perfect example of a community partner coming to the CCE, sharing a need, and the CCE being able to connect them through various offices and faculty resources, so the people who would be the best fit for addressing that need can help them continue the good work they are doing more effectively.
“Our offices are downtown, so we can connect with community partners, really hear from them what their needs are, and then leverage college resources to help them support the good work that they’re already doing,” Wood said.
“The partnership is powerful in that it will help inform programming, funding resources, and project sustainability while impacting the lives of women, children, and families in our shared community,” Moubray said. “It is also unique in that it blends healthcare, education/research, and community development to address maternal-child health outcomes.”
“We would like to give credit to our Center for Community Engagement,” Dr. Lewis said. “Without the incredible connection created by Carly Legg Wood, Executive Director of the Center, we would not have been aware of this opportunity. The team has been instrumental in coordinating logistics, such as timelines and schedules, and has played an essential role in maintaining clear communication between all participants.”
Dr. Lewis and Parkyn are grateful for the opportunity to help with such an important program within FFH and hope to see a positive change in the work they are doing.
