After a premature birth, North Texas mom found help. Now state invests $4 million in maternal health program

Fort Worth-Based Maternal Health Accelerator to expand services after state buy-in.

A North Texas program designed to improve outcomes for mothers and babies is getting a big bump from the state.

The Maternal Health Accelerator (MHA), a coalition created to address high maternal mortality and pregnancy-related complications, is receiving more than $4 million from the Texas Health and Human Services Commission to expand services across the region.

For Fort Worth mother Bessie Bronstein, those services arrived during one of the most difficult moments of her life.

A Scary Start for Mother and Baby

"My pregnancy was pretty easy until it wasn't," Bronstein said.

During her babymoon in Mexico, she noticed her feet puff up and had to wear her husband's shoes.

"I was so swollen to the point where I, like, couldn't walk," she recalled.

Shortly after they got back to Texas, she went in to see her doctor and was admitted to the hospital for high blood pressure.

She stayed there for weeks as staff monitored her condition-- eventually deciding that she needed an emergency cesarean section.

"That morning when they were like, 'All right, you're having a baby today,' I was really scared. It was really awful," Bronstein said.

Bronstein's son, Bernie, was born on February 23, 10 weeks early, weighing just 2½ pounds.

He spent roughly the first three months of his life in the NICU.

"He had all these wires in him," Bronstein recalled. "It was kind of sad and scary."

While Bernie remained in the NICU, Bronstein returned home a few days after birth to recover.

That's when someone from the Maternal Health Accelerator reached out.

"Having someone come to the house and just kind of walk me through everything that had happened because, you know, I stayed an extra five days in the hospital after my surgery, but I was asleep, I was drugged up, like I was freaked out about him," she said. "It was super helpful just for my mental health."

Addressing a Persistent Problem

Tarrant County's statistics as a whole run high when it comes to maternal mortality.

"What can we do differently for moms and babies?" Parker recalled asking when seeing the state's numbers on death rates of mothers in Tarrant County.

"Second highest in the entire nation, in specific ZIP code 76104 specifically. And we just sort of said as a community, 'Enough's enough,'" Parker said.

She created the coalition behind the Maternal Health Accelerator four years ago.

The MHA is led by the TCU's Burnett School of Medicine and UT Southwestern Medical Center and includes health care providers like MHMR and other community partners across Tarrant and Dallas counties.

How the Program Works

The Maternal Health Accelerator connects pregnant and postpartum women with a range of services, including medical check-ups and iron supplements, to health screenings and help overcoming barriers to appointments such as transportation.

Any woman can access the program at any time, whether she is pregnant or postpartum.

"It may when your baby is a few months old and you're starting to say, wow, I feel overwhelmed and in over my head," said Susan Garnett, CEO of MHMR of Tarrant County.

The program also includes the Help Me Grow app, where moms can connect for services and accept referrals.

She said you don't have to have a problem, either, to enter the program.

"Somebody may need very little support and somebody may need a lot of support. Either way is OK. We're just there to help them build their own resilience and their own strengths so that they can feel good about the job they do as a mom. Healthy moms make healthy families," she said.

Dr. Shena Dillon, an associate professor at the TCU School of Medicine, said providers look for warning signs that can lead to serious complications.

"Things that we're looking for are high blood pressure, pre-eclampsia complications that we know may lead to delivering a baby early and staying in the hospital longer," Dillon said.

Expanding Services Across North Texas

Leaders say the new state funding will allow the program to serve more families and build on results, while tracking data with HHSC.

"Look at how many lives saved, how we've reduced severe obstetric complications in delivery rooms across North Texas," Parker said.

"I think it's necessary," Bronstein said of the MHA program.

About three months after she left the hospital, Bernie was finally able to come home, too.

Today, he's everything she imagined.

"I'm so glad we've made it and we're here," Bronstein said.