Mary's Center for Maternal & Child Care, Inc.
Description: Mary's Center provides health care, social services, and education to more than 10,000 low-income, uninsured people in the District of Columbia.
Target demographics: Twenty years ago, Mary’s Center was founded to address the demand for bilingual services to pregnant women and their infants in predominantly Latino areas of Ward One. Today, it serves multicultural populations throughout the metro Washington, D.C. region, serving individuals and families who have limited or no access to health-related services. As the foreign-born population has skyrocketed to over 1 million in the DC metropolitan region, the diversity and needs of our majority-immigrant population have increased.
While many of our participants come of Latin America, primarily El Salvador, Mexico and Guatemala, we also serve many Ethiopian, Vietnamese and Middle Eastern families. Most of our participants are low-income, 21% are uninsured, and 73% receive public insurance coverage.
Direct beneficiaries per year: 10,379 participants served in 2007 (increase of 47% since 2005!), not including several social and educational services and programs.
USA locations: Metropolitan Washington, DC
Board Members and Affiliation: Mary MacPherson, Chairperson
Luis Carrera, Vice-Chair
Alejandra Ceja, Secretary
Ximena Cespedes
Patrick Chaulk, MD
Estelle Cooke-Sampson, MD
Randee Grant-Gueye
Luis Guardia, Treasurer
John Kaelin
Johary Monserrate
Julie Martinez Ortega
Guadalupe Pacheco
Eluvia Sanchez
Luisa Sanchez
Hanita Schreiber
• 63% of our family literacy program participants improved an educational functioning level—a rate 28 percentage points above the District of Columbia standard.
• 95% of Mary’s Center babies are up to date with their immunizations—only 68% of DC babies are.
• Compared to the DC average of 88% of babies born at a healthy birth weight (greater than 5.5 lbs), 97% of babies born to Mary’s Center families had healthy birth weights.
• 99% of Mary’s Center families had no substantiated cases of child abuse and neglect—unfortunately, only 63% of families in DC did not have substantiated cases.
