By Miriam Zayadi
More than $400,000 has been paid to approximately 350 mothers in Flint in just over the first month of the nationally pathfinding program RxKids, the program’s coordinators announced at a celebration Feb. 14.
The initiative, which launched Jan. 10, is the first city-wide maternal and infant cash prescription program in the nation and was designed by pediatrician and public health advocate Mona Hanna-Attisha and Luke Shaefer, inaugural director of poverty solutions at the University of Michigan.
Aiming to reach and support every expectant mother in Flint, the Rx Kids program pays $1500 during pregnancy and $500 dollars a month for the baby’s first year. The program also offers assistance to mothers for transportation to and from medical appointments.
All pregnant mothers living in Flint and infants born in 2024 are eligible to enroll, with no income restrictions.
The program is designed to support mothers specifically during the first year after birth because, she stated, “families are the poorest around childbirth and this is also the most important time for a child’s development.
“Their whole future life is shaped by what happens during this period,” she said.
Shaefer added that the first year after a baby’s birth can be perilous, sometimes resulting in families losing their kids to out-of home placements – in many cases, outcomes driven by poverty.
“So, we are going to be looking to see if this money buffers families from the economic shock of having a baby, to help them keep their child in that first year,” he said.
The program started with “zero money in the bank” last year and so far has secured $43 million of a goal of $55 million in funding, according to Hanna-Attisha and Shaefer.
Funding came from large organizations including the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, the Doris Duke Foundation, the Kellogg Foundation, and others, listed at FlintRxKids.com. But support also emerged from “tens of thousands of individuals that are just energized and excited about the vision and have given to the cause,” Shaefer said.
Asked what motivated this initiative and why it was launched specifically in Flint, Hanna-Attisha emphasized “Everything that we do in Flint is done in this humble sort of community-partnered way.
“It took a lot of thinking outside of the box and a lot of fundraising to make this happen,” she declared when asked how the vision was brought to life.
“Our initiative here in Flint has an infrastructure that has our community members, moms, dads, and children at the table as an advisory [group]. We even have a group of kids that advise us. It’s this long-standing kind of lived experience of hardship.”
Shaefer recalls one case from just before the program launched when a mother needed to come in to her first appointment after giving birth – a crucially important time for both baby and mom, he noted. But she had to go back to work four days after giving birth, creating an “unimaginable physical toll” on both mother and child.
Hanna-Attisha said in addition to many stories emerging from community conversations, numerical data supports the need for RxKids. One source is evidence collected from the Flint Registry, which she runs, showing people are struggling to make ends meet.
Data from multiple sources emphasizes that “Flint is the poorest city in our state and one of the poorest in the nation,” she said.
Shaefer cites results of the federal 2021 Expanded Child Tax Credit — another source of evidence from a program similar to RxKids.
“That program provided money to families with children all across the nation, cutting child poverty to a historic low that year,” he stated. “Food hardship fell to the lowest level that we have ever recorded in 2021, and kids just did better on so many levels.”
The main goal of the RxKids program, he noted, is to see a change in health outcomes for both babies and their mothers. Success is measured by asking questions like “Does the money help people eat and keep a roof over their head?” and “Are we really able to support parents in the hard work of parenting in that first year?”
“Another interesting piece of it is that research suggests many of these dollars are being spent back into the local community,” Schaefer added. “We see it as a different vision of economic development. Instead of paying some business to locate a factory here, we can provide resources to families who are going to spend on grocery stores and clothing stores in the community.”
The program has attracted attention and support at both the state and national level.
White House senior advisor and American Rescue Plan coordinator Gene Sperling, asserted “RxKids is living proof that now that Americans have seen what President Biden’s monthly Child Tax Credit did for dramatically lowering child poverty and lifting up all working families — there is no going back.
“With help from the American Rescue Plan, Governor Whitmer and Flint Mayor Sheldon Neeley, RxKids is innovating on and expanding the Child Tax Credit for the all-important first year of life for children born in Flint. Instead of being a one and done pilot, I believe that RxKids is going to be a national model that will be replicated across the nation.”
Hanna-Attisha hopes that is the case, and envisions that at least RxKids will continue in Flint.
“We hope to do this in perpetuity,” she said. “The beauty of the funding model that we’ve created is that it leverages both public and private dollars, which creates this playbook of sustainability and scalability.”
Looking forward, Shaefer said, “We are hearing interest from all over the country –interestingly, both from what people might consider blue states and red states. Flint has now become a national leader that we should walk alongside.”
“This is really a program about uplifting dignity,” Shaefer said. “So many of the programs we have help families, but they make them feel bad when they have to fill out really long forms that ask a lot of intrusive questions.
“We don’t have to do it that way. We can have better outcomes if we empower families and trust them. We have a program that is easy to understand, and we can just reimagine the social contract,:” he said.
Dr. Mona added, “This is about love, dignity, agency, empowerment, trust and a new vision of the social contract and how we care for each other.”
Information and application forms for the RxKids program are available here.