CAI is strengthening maternal and child health across New York State by serving as the Perinatal Infant Community Health Collaboratives (PICHC) Center for Community Action.
Through training, tools, and ongoing support, we equip community-based perinatal home visiting programs with the skills and resources they need to improve health and well-being for birthing people, infants, and young children.
By building the capacity of trusted home visiting providers, CAI helps communities deliver more consistent, high-quality care—laying the groundwork for better outcomes during pregnancy, postpartum, and early childhood.
Our priority outcomes include:
- Increasing postpartum visit rates with obstetric medical providers
- Reducing maternal and infant mortality and morbidity
- Reducing preterm births and low birth weight
The initiative
The PICHC Center for Community Action (CCA) strengthens New York State’s perinatal home visiting workforce by ensuring staff have access to high-quality training, coaching, and technical assistance. Our goal is to help home visitors more effectively connect pregnant and postpartum individuals—and their families—to timely healthcare and the supportive services that improve outcomes.
CAI’s work through the PICHC CCA includes:
- Training community health workers and supervisors statewide in core competencies and practical, evidence-informed skills that strengthen service delivery
- Providing tailored technical assistance to 26 PICHC programs, 10 Healthy Families New York programs, and 8 Nurse-Family Partnership programs to help ensure eligible families are reached and fully supported
- Convening a statewide learning community that equips the perinatal workforce to improve client engagement in postpartum care and strengthen continuity of support for families
The impact
The PICHC CCA has trained more than 200 perinatal home visitors, supervisors and program managers from CBOs, community health centers, hospitals and health departments across New York State.
Project funder
New York State Department of Health
Leadership and contact
Clare Friedrich, Maternal Child Health Director: pichc@caiglobal.org