Enrollment Strategies for Rural Centering Sites
Mar 28, 2016 15:48:27 GMT -5
John Craine, Margie, and 1 more like this
Post by Tanya Munroe on Mar 28, 2016 15:48:27 GMT -5
Brenda Lamont from Bethel, Alaska (CenteringConnects user "blamont24") was kind enough to share about her experience at a very hard-to-reach practice. I hope you find her messages as inspiring as I have, thank you Brenda!
It’s really hard to see the positives when it seems like there are so many obstacles to overcome. There was a lot of talk and well, there still is, that Centering Pregnancy won’t work out here and that it isn’t sustainable. Well, we are still going 4 ½ years later. The only reason we haven’t grown more is due to the lack of providers… NOT because women aren’t interested.
A really big obstacle for us is that out here in Bethel, most of our ladies have to fly in under Medicaid for day trips just to come for their Centering group. They live in surrounding villages with access to Bethel by plane or boat only. These flights are anywhere from $60-800 round trip, so it can be pretty expensive.
As far as the women not being interested… well, we fixed that pretty quickly. When we first started out here in rural Alaska, our women thought this was a study group… to study them. Or a therapy group, like they needed counseling or something. So, we called each woman who we randomly invited and talked about all of the fun things we would do. The healthy snacks, the activities, the games, the social time and of course their time with the provider… for two hours. At the very least, if they were skeptical, we asked them to give the first 2-3 groups a try and reminded them they could opt out. Over the last 4 years or so, we really have only had a few actually opt out after attending a group or two, and when asked, they said that they just weren’t “group” kind of people or that it just didn’t work for them to travel once a month for prenatal care with their families at home or their jobs. But once the ladies came and tried a group or two, the majority were hooked. They would then start asking if they could bring their friend, cousin or sister to join the group, even though they aren’t due in the same month.
We also had women on their 4th, 5th, or 6th child that would say ”I already know everything about having a baby, so I probably don’t need to come.” That’s when we voiced to them, that for that reason alone… we REALLY need them even more. For the ladies that haven’t had babies before, they really need their experience and wisdom. They would reluctantly come, but at the end of our groups… they would share that they had STILL learned new things and loved the group!
I’m sure there will be a lot of obstacles, but just keep brainstorming and finding ways to get over them!
It takes time to build it up, but once you get a few groups going and convince women to come check it out, I think you’ll see that most love the group atmosphere and find it so encouraging.
It’s really hard to see the positives when it seems like there are so many obstacles to overcome. There was a lot of talk and well, there still is, that Centering Pregnancy won’t work out here and that it isn’t sustainable. Well, we are still going 4 ½ years later. The only reason we haven’t grown more is due to the lack of providers… NOT because women aren’t interested.
A really big obstacle for us is that out here in Bethel, most of our ladies have to fly in under Medicaid for day trips just to come for their Centering group. They live in surrounding villages with access to Bethel by plane or boat only. These flights are anywhere from $60-800 round trip, so it can be pretty expensive.
As far as the women not being interested… well, we fixed that pretty quickly. When we first started out here in rural Alaska, our women thought this was a study group… to study them. Or a therapy group, like they needed counseling or something. So, we called each woman who we randomly invited and talked about all of the fun things we would do. The healthy snacks, the activities, the games, the social time and of course their time with the provider… for two hours. At the very least, if they were skeptical, we asked them to give the first 2-3 groups a try and reminded them they could opt out. Over the last 4 years or so, we really have only had a few actually opt out after attending a group or two, and when asked, they said that they just weren’t “group” kind of people or that it just didn’t work for them to travel once a month for prenatal care with their families at home or their jobs. But once the ladies came and tried a group or two, the majority were hooked. They would then start asking if they could bring their friend, cousin or sister to join the group, even though they aren’t due in the same month.
We also had women on their 4th, 5th, or 6th child that would say ”I already know everything about having a baby, so I probably don’t need to come.” That’s when we voiced to them, that for that reason alone… we REALLY need them even more. For the ladies that haven’t had babies before, they really need their experience and wisdom. They would reluctantly come, but at the end of our groups… they would share that they had STILL learned new things and loved the group! I’m sure there will be a lot of obstacles, but just keep brainstorming and finding ways to get over them!
It takes time to build it up, but once you get a few groups going and convince women to come check it out, I think you’ll see that most love the group atmosphere and find it so encouraging.