What a monumental day this is for Cleveland’s Nurse-Family Partnership! Today is about the moms, dads and babies, but it’s also appropriate to review our
history, especially because the two central figures in bringing Nurse-Family Partnership to Cleveland for the very first time are actually in the room today.
Several years ago, I received a call from Mt. Sinai Director Belleruth Naparstek saying that she and Mt. Sinai Founding Board Chair S. Lee Kohrman
had read about a prenatal nurse home-visiting program that had lifelong benefits for mom and baby that was backed by thirty years of research. I had known
about NFP in the early days of the Foundation but at that time Mt. Sinai didn’t have the resources to establish a program in Cleveland.
My first call after speaking to Belleruth was to the leadership of MetroHealth Medical Center. We approached MetroHealth because of its expertise
in maternal/child health, its Level III Perinatal Center and its wonderful name in the community. I asked if MetroHealth would operate the program and they
said enthusiastically, “Yes!”