Bronx Healthy Start Partners

The Bronx Healthy Start Partnership (BxHSP) is a collaboration led by Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
BxHSP partners include:

  • Morris Heights Health Center (MHHC), Section 330 federally qualified health center networks with large school health programs
  • Montefiore Medical Center, Group, and School Health Program

Serving Bronx residents for various communities to improve birth outcomes and promote health and wellness.

Click here for program highlights.

With 1.4 million residents, the Bronx is the nation’s poorest urban county. All BxHSP partners currently serve four target community districts (CDs), each of which had an excess of 10 infant deaths per 1,000 live births averaged over 2007-2009 and a total of 49 infant deaths during that period.

Bronx Healthy Start Program serves families of the Bronx with a priority districts:

  • HighBridge, Concourse, Mt. Eden, and Concourse Village (CD 4)
  • University/Morris Heights (CD 5)
  • Belmont, Bathgate, West Farms, and E Tremont(CD 6)
  • Fordham (CD 7)
  • Morris Park, Pelham Parkway, Pelham Gardens, Allerton, Bronxdale, Laconia and Van Nest (CD 11)
  • Edenwald, Wakefield, Williamsbridge, Woodlawn, Norwood, Fish Bay, Eastchester, Olinville, and Baychester (CD 12)


The purpose of the Bronx Healthy Start Partnership is to prevent infant mortality and the premature and low birthweight births that contribute disproportionately to infant deaths among African American women in the Bronx, targeting the four most severely affected Community Districts, i.e., CDs 4, 6, 11, and 12.

BxHSP will improve women’s health among this population through outreach and enrollment in health insurance coverage under the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA). The program provides navigators to educate and aid the uninsured regarding eligibility, subsidies, and how to sign up through the New York State health insurance exchange website (nystateofhealth.org). Expands existing ACA outreach and education through its federally qualified health centers, coordinates and facilitates access to services, and provides comprehensive individual and community-wide needs assessments.

Serving a minimum of 700 program participants each year, BxHSP's federally qualified health centers:

  • Build upon current and past Maternal and Child Health programs to strengthen, coordinate, and integrate women’s clinical preventive services, inter-conception care and reproductive life planning, and high quality, patient-centered medical homes for high-risk women.
  • Provide health education programs that support breastfeeding, immunization, safe sleep, family planning, smoking cessation, and prevention of fetal alcohol syndrome.
  • Recruit and train community health workers (CHWs) who:
    • Conduct maternal and child screening and home visiting with cultural & linguistic appropriateness and traumainformed care
    • Refer families to existing resilience support and therapeutic programs, including Centering Pregnancy, co-located Healthy Steps, Nurse Family Partnership, Healthy Families New York
    • Engage and involve fathers in all aspects of family planning and family life
    • Promote evidence-based parenting programs