Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health (MCAH) develops systems with the goal to help protect and improve the health of California’s reproductive age women, infants, children, adolescents, and their families. To accomplish this mission, MCAH maintains partnerships, contracts, and agreements with State, federal and local agencies in both public and private sectors.

Mission Statement

The mission of the Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health (MCAH) Program is to develop systems that protect and improve the health of California's women of reproductive age, infants, children, adolescents, and their families and foster health, well-being and equity across the reproductive life course.

Subprograms

The MCAH program is comprised of the following subprograms:

• Black Infant Health Program
• California Home Visiting Care Coordination Project (Nurse Family Partnership)
• Comprehensive Perinatal Services Program
• Fetal Infant Mortality Review
• Medically Vulnerable Care Coordination Project
• Perinatal Outreach Program
• Sudden Infant Death Syndrome Program

The State Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health (MCAH) Branch funds local health departments to carry out the core public health functions of assessment, assurance, and policy development to improve the health of the MCAH population. Funding is provided through Title V MCH Block Grant, Title XIX Medicaid Federal Financial Participation (FFP) and County General Funds.

Program staff develops policy and conducts activities that improve outcomes for the MCAH population. The program works very closely with community collaboratives and coalitions to help build effective community infrastructures that can provide family-centered, culturally competent services. Data on perinatal outcomes such as infant birthweights, first trimester entry into prenatal care, infant mortality and teenage pregnancy are used as indicators to measure success with local intervention programs. The program closely monitors legislation that might have an impact on county residents and makes policy recommendations as appropriate.

Contact

For more information, please contact the Interim MCAH Coordinator:

Phela J. Batiste, BSN, RN, PHN
(661) 321-3000
(661) 868-1291 Fax
batistep@kerncounty.com