For over 30 years, Martin County Healthy Start Coalition has provided expectant mothers support to ensure their babies are born healthy and happy. Now the organization is taking its services on the road.
The new Maternity on the Move (MOM) Mobile is a 38-foot, brightly colored Winnebago RV that travels four days a week throughout Martin County to provide prenatal and postnatal care to underserved communities in areas including Golden Gate, East Stuart, Indiantown, and Hobe Sound. The mobile unit is staffed by two certified nurse midwives and a medical assistant, who are fluent in English, Spanish, and Creole.
“People who are not going to their prenatal visits are not doing it out of neglect,” says Samantha Suffich, CEO of Martin County Healthy Start Coalition. “It is really hard to juggle a job and kids and transportation.” Suffich explains that women in some areas of Hobe Sound, for example, would have to take three different buses to get to the Florida Community Health Centers Stuart location, the primary Medicaid-based center in the area.
MOM Mobile is equipped with two exam rooms, a blood-draw station, an intake desk, medical supplies, and an awning to shade waiting patients. Expectant mothers are seen by appointment to receive prenatal exams and get information on caring for themselves and their babies.
Suffich says the idea for mobile maternity care was born out of a conversation she had in 2019 with Hobe Sound Community Chest, a nonprofit organization that supports the local community through funding programs and initiatives that serve Hobe Sound residents in need. “They asked me, ‘What would be your game-changing idea to fix the biggest problem you are seeing in the community?’” recalls Suffich. She suggested the mobile unit, and the organization offered to pay for staff if Suffich could find funding for the unit itself.
She did, thanks to the American Rescue Plan Act, a federal bill that was passed in 2021 to address the continued impact of COVID on the economy, public health, and more. Suffich submitted a proposal to the Martin County Commission and was awarded $284,241 (through the American Rescue Plan Act) for the mobile unit. Impact100 Martin provided an additional $100,000 grant, which helped Suffich purchase an RV and
retrofit it for her needs.
At press time, MOM Mobile was planning to begin health-care operations by May—good timing, as Cleveland Clinic Martin North Hospital announced it would cease its labor and delivery unit April 1 (consolidating with Cleveland Clinic in Tradition Hospital, about 20 miles away). Says Suffich: “The objective [of MOM Mobile] is for no one to be turned away.”
To learn more and find out exactly where to locate MOM Mobile in your area, visit mchealthystart.org/mommobile.
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