PRESS CONTACT: Kara Dress, 202-367-2434, marketing@lamaze.org
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WASHINGTON (February 25, 2008)—Six community outreach programs were awarded grants from Lamaze International, five for $500 and one for $300. Recipients were chosen from Oklahoma, Michigan, Texas, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and New York out of 19 applicants.

The Community-Based Outreach Grants Initiative, formed in 2004 by Lamaze International, is designed to support organizations or individuals who have developed programs that ensure childbearing families in underserved populations have access to information and education about the health and safety benefits of normal birth. The initiative supports Lamaze International’s priority to make childbirth education available to all women, regardless of income, location or ethnicity.

This year’s chosen recipients will use the money in various ways:

• Emerson Alternative High School Teen Mothers Program in Oklahoma City, OK, will use their grant to expand prenatal education and birth advocacy services for all pregnant mothers enrolled in Emerson Alternative High School.
• Regents of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor will use their grant to establish a scholarship program for Lamaze childbirth, breastfeeding and newborn classes to those underserved and vulnerable clients without the resources to pay.
• The Fort Worth/Dallas Birthing Project (FWDBP) in Texas is expanding its Lamaze childbirth education services to women whose babies are dying at the highest rate and are not accessing existing services due to cost or cultural appropriateness. They will use their grant to purchase aids for their childbirth education classes and to support education during home visits.
• The Indiana Regional Medical Center (IRMC) in Indiana, PA, will use their grant to create and disperse informational materials to countywide food banks, shelters, soup kitchens, etc., to increase awareness of the free programs offered at IRMC's OB/GYN Care Center, which serves the most vulnerable women of Indiana County.
• Milestones Parenting Resource in Creedmoor, North Carolina, will purchase teaching aids for free childbirth education course series and breastfeeding support targeting teen expectant parents in the southern Granville County area using their award.
• A recipient of a Community-Based Outreach Grant the past three years, Jacqueline Levine of East Rockaway, NY, was chosen again. She will spend her grant on materials for her one-on-one and class education that teaches patients how to insist on transparent and evidence-based care and avoid routine interventions when they are at the hospital.

Grant awardees must submit a final report, including a project summary and a detailed review of actual expenditures of the grant funds. For more information or to apply for a Lamaze International Community-Based Outreach Grant, visit www.lamaze.org.

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About Lamaze International
Since its founding in 1960, Lamaze International has worked to promote, support and protect normal birth through education and advocacy through the dedicated efforts of professional childbirth educators, providers and parents. An international organization with regional, state and area affiliates, its members and volunteer leaders include childbirth educators, nurses, midwives, doulas, lactation consultants, physicians, students and consumers. For more information about Lamaze International and the Lamaze Institute for Normal Birth, visit www.lamaze.org.

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