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DPH official warns federal cuts threaten maternal and child health data and services

AI-Generated Content: All content on this page was generated by AI to highlight key points from the meeting. For complete details and context, we recommend watching the full video. so we can fix them.

Summary

Dr. Elaine Fitzgerald Lewis, head of the Bureau of Family Health and Nutrition at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, told the Joint Committee that time-limited federal grants and cuts to national data systems threaten programs that serve mothers, infants and children, and urged securing state funding to sustain services.

Dr. Elaine Fitzgerald Lewis, director of the Bureau of Family Health and Nutrition at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, told the Joint Committee on Children, Families and Persons with Disabilities that federal funding uncertainty and the loss of national data resources are jeopardizing core maternal and child public-health programs in Massachusetts.

Lewis said the bureau — known as BFAN — runs about 50 programs that reach more than 1 million families each year, including home visiting, early intervention for roughly 40,000 infants and toddlers, WIC nutrition services for about 120,000 families a month and newborn hearing screening…

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