By Heather M. Butts
Rachel Schwartz is the Senior Director of Maternal and Child Health at Public Health Solutions (PHS). Ashley Powell is a social worker for its EMPATHS program, a maternal mental health research network that addresses the needs of pregnant and postpartum parents. They spoke with the Amsterdam News about their EMPATHS program and work to improve public health in New York City.
AmNews: Can you give me some background about the work that Public Health Solutions does?
Rachel Schwartz: We are the largest public health nonprofit serving New York City. Our vision is healthy families, thriving communities and health equity in New York City. In our maternal child health unit we make that happen through implementing proven approaches that we know improve pregnancy outcomes, that improve child development, and central to all of that is positive parent child interaction.
A lot of the work that we do is really relationship-based because we know that makes a difference outside of the maternal child health unit where we have about 10 home visiting programs and several other initiatives. PHS is also the largest provider of WIC in New York state, the special supplemental program for women, infants, and children. We do a lot of benefits enrollment.
PHS does a number of other things in terms of supporting smaller nonprofits with what’s called contracted management services so we are the master contractor for the New York City Department of Health and we receive funds and then distribute them and provide technical assistance to hundreds of community-based organizations across the city.
PHS’s most well-known initiative at this point is called WholeYouNYC. It brings together everything that we have historically done ranging from those contract management services and direct work in our neighborhood health division working in communities. WholeYouNYC
is a community resource network and a social care network to support New Yorkers with connecting to social care related needs. So that is kind of the newest approach that PHS has taken and we’ve been building on this work to create community resource networks and make it easier for individuals and families to connect to services throughout the city.
AmNews: Please tell us about the EMPATHS program.
Schwartz: EMPATHS is actually a loose acronym for enhanced perinatal mental health spectrum of support. It is the important part because we know that not every individual needs or wants to be connected to a licensed psychotherapist. Some people are seeking community. I think the example I give a lot of the time is new parents who have recently arrived to the country. We work with hundreds, if not thousands, of recent arrivals in this country or people who’ve moved from other boroughs.
They don’t have the support of their community around them when they’re pregnant, birthing and postpartum and so we wanted to make sure in that spectrum that it started off with peer-based, community-based support groups for pregnant folks , for postpartum folks and then that spectrum ranges to referral partners who are social worker-led groups. . . One of the most important things for EMPATHS is we also put emergency resources into every person’s hand so every person we talk to, we make sure that they know about the National Maternal Mental Health Hotline.
Ashley Powell: I think since the navigators have kind of opened up this conversation with the screening, a lot of people have felt more seen and heard and I’ve been hearing that also from the navigators as well, so we do work as a team to get the clients the support and the services that they need. Part of my role is just almost like that immediate support. As Rachel mentioned, there’s a screener involved in the conversation. It is okay to talk about how you’ve been feeling.
Once we see the clients are open to talking with someone, we work together to see what services are beneficial for the client. . . It’s just been great to see once they open up that conversation with them, just how much they’re getting the support that they need in real time so I [have] been able to meet with the clients, connect them to long-term services, provide groups. . . Postpartum Support International [trained] our navigators on how to have these difficult conversations.
AmNews: What else should people know?
Schwartz: One of the things that I often say is mental health is experienced by everyone and so . . . having a huge community around you is not necessarily protective of someone’s likelihood of experiencing a mental health disorder or just needing more community. What we would love people to know is that here is always help available.
Powell: I feel like letting people know that they’re not alone in their experience and that there [are] resources because the thing that I’ve noticed is that a lot of people really don’t know what the resources are, and they’re almost shocked. I’ve even heard this from the navigators. They’re shocked. ‘Oh I didn’t know this was here, I didn’t know there were so many things available to me.’ I didn’t know . . . I could get diapers, I didn’t know all of these things. It’s okay to open up the conversation about how you are doing, and it’s okay to not be okay.
Editor’s Note: This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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