epoch game Can a car ride help your health? For South Florida maternity patients, it’s an issue
Marie Odvil would have spent nearly $100 on Uber rides in one week to attend three appointments as her baby’s due date neared.
Instead, the 38-year-old Miami Shores woman got free rides in an electric to and from Miami-Dade’s public hospital during the final weeks of pregnancy.
It’s part of a new partnership that nonprofit Green Cars for Kids recently launched with Jackson Health in Miami-Dade, Broward Health and electric car service Freebee to make prenatal and postpartum care more accessible in South Florida. The goal: to help pregnant women and reduce the risk of preventable pregnancy complications for moms and babies.
In South Florida, several hospitals have stopped offering maternity services, most recently cash-strapped North Shore Medical Center in North Miami-Dade, mirroring a trend across the country that mostly affects predominantly Black and Hispanic communities, underserved populations that have a higher rate of dying from pregnancy-related complications.
While Miami-Dade and Broward counties are not considered “maternal care deserts,” access to care is still a challenge. And it starts with a ride to the doctor.
“A lot of women are just simply not getting to their prenatal care appointments because they don’t have reliable transportation, or like in South Florida, they are having trouble waiting at the bus stop,” in the heat, with feel-like temperatures of more than 100, said Dr. Catherine Toms, founder and director of Green Cars For Kids. Pregnancy can increase a person’s risk for heat exhaustion, heat stroke and other heat-related illnesses because the body has to work harder to cool down.
At some point, “you have to make a decision. Is it healthier for me to miss my appointment and go home and cool down?” Toms said. “These are the kind of things that we want to remedy.”
The free car ride service is offered at the Broward HealthPoint Cora E. Braynon Family Health Center in Fort Lauderdale, an affiliate of Broward Health. The clinic serves patients in ZIP codes with some of the highest maternal mortality rates in the country and is working to identify and offer free rides to low-income, high-risk patients struggling to make it to their appointments, according to Toms. Jackson Health’s Women’s Hospital is also working to identify and enroll eligible patients.
The program works a bit differently than the typical Freebee service that anyone can use within the boundaries of a city.
Patients enrolled in the free ride initiative don’t have to worry about where they live. Freebee will pick them up from anywhere in South Florida and take them to and from their prenatal or postpartum appointment at the public hospital office for non-emergency care. That means a patient can live in Homestead and get a free round trip ride on Freebee to and from Jackson’s Women’s Hospital in Miami. The hospitals are scheduling the ride service for eligible patients.
The vehicles also have car seats available for moms who have younger children. All of the vehicles are equipped with an iPad pre-loaded with information on a variety of topics including prenatal and infant health, sleep and nutrition. They are provided by the March of Dimes, a nonprofit that works to improve the health of babies and moms.
For Ana Anasjevic, 33, who moved to Broward County from New York City, the free car rides helped make the last months of pregnancy easier. She learned about the rides from another patient in her breastfeeding class while waiting for an Uber outside of the Cora E. Braynon Family Health Center.
“I’m really so grateful, especially as a non-working mom right now. I really appreciate every dollar that I can save to spend on my baby,” said Anasjevic, whose son was born in May.
Anasjevic didn’t need a car in New York City, with walkable destinations and a convenient subway system. In South Florida, her reliance on transit comes with a hefty price tag.
“When you come from $100 a month for unlimited, you can go anywhere you want” in New York, “then here, like having to pay $50 wherever you want to go every day,” it’s a lot of money, she said.
Budgeting for a new baby has also been top of mind for Odvil, who had appointments several times a week at Jackson as her September due date neared. Odvil told the Miami Herald in Creole that she’s “very happy” that she no longer has to worry about how to get to her appointments.
The week the Herald spoke with Odvil, she had three appointments scheduled at Jackson. If she didn’t have the free car ride, Odvil said she would have spent nearly $100 that week on Uber rides to and from the hospital.
What’s next for free rides?Green Cars for Kids is designed to serve low-income pregnant women, up to a year postpartum, and children under 18, Toms said. The initiative is funded by the Health Foundation of South Florida, nonprofit March of Dimes, and The Women’s Hospital at Jackson Memorial.
So far, the free rides initiative, which launched in May 2023 in Broward County and expanded to Miami-Dade in late June, has provided more than 3,560 trips, according to Toms.
Melida Akiti, the chief transformation officer at Broward Health, said the partnership has been key to “ensuring our maternity patients are able to make their appointments without transportation barriers.”
In Broward, Green Cars for Kids is focused on giving rides to maternity care patients, as well as pediatric patients who have non-emergency appointments scheduled at the Broward HealthPoint Cora E. Braynon Family Health Center.
Plans are also in the works to roll out the service to the recently opened HEART Community Resource Center in Lauderdale Lakes. The center is powered by a health plan owned by Broward Health and Memorial Healthcare System, Broward’s other public hospital network, and is offering maternity care services as part of an effort to increase access to prenatal and postpartum care for women in Lauderhill, Lauderdale Lakes, Sunrise and Oakland Park.
In Miami-Dade, the service is available eligible pregnant women with non-emergency appointments at Jackson Health’s Women’s hospital, though Toms wants to eventually expand the service to pediatric clinics in the county. The nonprofit also wants to offer free rides to other health providers in South Florida, including in Palm Beach and Monroe counties, but they’ll need help with funding and other resources to make it possible. She said the goal is to reduce barriers of care and improve maternal and infant health outcomes in the region.
After a sharp rise in maternal deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. has seen a decline although the country still has the highest rate of pregnancy-related deaths among high-income nations, according to a report released by the Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation that focuses on health-care related issues. The report analyzed recent data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, of which the U.S. is a member.
In 2022, the maternal mortality rate for the U.S. was 22.3 deaths per 100,000 live births, compared with a rate of 32.9 in 2021, CDC data shows. That’s “far above rates for other high-income countries,” according to the Commonwealth Fund.
And the rates are highest for Black women, who are “three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than white women,” according to the CDC. Maternal mortality rates are also six times higher for women over 40 compared to women under 25, according to Toms, with low-income women also at higher risk for pregnancy-related deaths.
“So much of what’s happening truly is preventable with good maternal care early for the mother,” said Loreen Chant, president and CEO of the Health Foundation of South Florida, which is helping to fund a variety of initiatives to improve maternal health in the region. The CDC says four in five pregnancy-related deaths in the U.S. are preventable.
“If we keep the mother healthy,” she said, “we significantly increase the likelihood that the baby will be healthy.”
To learn more and to donateVisit greencars4kids.org to learn more about the nonprofit and to donate. The nonprofit will be also be participating in Give Miami Day on Nov. 21.epoch game