Mary's Center for Maternal & Child Care, Inc.
Target demographics: Twenty years ago, Mary’s Center was founded to address the demand for bilingual services to pregnant women and their infants in predominantly Latino areas of Ward One. Today, it serves multicultural populations throughout the metro Washington, D.C. region, serving individuals and families who have limited or no access to health-related services. As the foreign-born population has skyrocketed to over 1 million in the DC metropolitan region, the diversity and needs of our majority-immigrant population have increased.
While many of our participants come of Latin America, primarily El Salvador, Mexico and Guatemala, we also serve many Ethiopian, Vietnamese and Middle Eastern families. Most of our participants are low-income, 21% are uninsured, and 73% receive public insurance coverage.
Direct beneficiaries per year: 10,379 participants served in 2007 (increase of 47% since 2005!), not including several social and educational services and programs.
• 63% of our family literacy program participants improved an educational functioning level—a rate 28 percentage points above the District of Columbia standard.
• 95% of Mary’s Center babies are up to date with their immunizations—only 68% of DC babies are.
• Compared to the DC average of 88% of babies born at a healthy birth weight (greater than 5.5 lbs), 97% of babies born to Mary’s Center families had healthy birth weights.
• 99% of Mary’s Center families had no substantiated cases of child abuse and neglect—unfortunately, only 63% of families in DC did not have substantiated cases.
