The Florida Keys Healthy Start Coalition is a 501(c)3 community-based organization. We are a prenatal and infant care Coalition of private and public agencies, community-centered providers, local businesses and passionate individuals in Monroe County. The Coalition is organized under the authority of the Department of Health to implement the provision of Florida’s Healthy Start legislation. It is the intent of the Healthy Start legislation to establish a system that guarantees that all women in Monroe County have access to prenatal care and that all infants have access to services that promote normal growth and development. Healthy Start services are provided free of charge and include but are not limited to: stress-management; home-visiting, parenting skills, nutritional information, baby-spacing information, breastfeeding and childbirth education, and assistance with accessing financial assistance for pregnancy costs and infant care costs. The Coalition was founded in 1992, as an outgrowth/extension of the previously named Monroe County Perinatal Network, whose main goal was to provide needed prenatal and infant care services to the community, yet received very little funding and operated primarily on volunteer efforts to provide these services. The community saw a great need for a more integrated, cohesive, and comprehensive agency to oversee and coordinate the many facets of providing maternal and infant care services, in a community with very unique geographic challenges; namely, a series of islands spanning 120 miles and connected only by 42 bridges. Thus, the Coalition was born.
