Education:
As American Rescue Plan Act dollars come to an end, child care providers in Michigan worry about how to survive without continued support. Grantees Michigan League for Public Policy and United Way for Southeastern Michigan are collaborating with public and private partners across the state. They are working to support child care providers and develop a plan to stabilize the early childhood sector and avoid future funding cliffs.
Health:
After federal measures that guaranteed Medicaid coverage during the pandemic ended, millions of children lost access to health care as they were removed from the rolls. The drop in coverage is “one of the fastest and most dramatic ruptures in the American safety net since Medicaid went into law in 1965” according to a recently published New York Times story. The story features data and analyses by the Georgetown Center for Children and Families, a WKKF grantee, raising the alarm on the need to better protect coverage for children who would otherwise be uninsured.
To address disparities in maternal and infant mortality rates for Black women in Detroit, grantee Birth Detroit is building a freestanding birth center run by Black women to serve Black birthing people. Scheduled to open in the spring of 2024, the new birth center will bring culturally relevant prenatal, birth and postpartum practices and care, and will center community voices in all they do.
Racial Equity:
WKKF grantee Diversity Data Kids has released a new equity tool: “From Redlining to Child Opportunity: Confronting systemic racist residential segregation.” This tool helps readers understand how past policies such as redlining have are linked to modern-day segregation and the health and wellbeing of neighborhoods in which children live. Explore for yourself how practices from a century ago intersect with the contemporary opportunity landscape.
