The Blues Project Helps At-Risk Mothers Deliver Healthy Babies

The Blues Project is a 3-year intervention for low-income, high-risk mothers in Memphis. The goal of the Project is to reduce infant mortality and improve maternal and infant health. Specific strategies include providing earlier prenatal care, reducing the prevalence of prematurity and low birth weight, and increasing social support and parenting skills.

The program has served more than 800 women and has demonstrated remarkable success. Compared to a group of mothers with similar background characteristics, Blues Project participants have substantially better birth outcomes, including:

• 48 percent fewer low birth-weight births
• 56 percent fewer premature births
• 92 percent fewer infant deaths

Additionally, medical costs are significantly lower for the intervention group than for the comparison group. For preterm and low birth-weight births, the average cost per birth was 64 percent lower for Blues Project families. Even for healthy births with no complications, the Project created considerable savings: average cost for each healthy birth was 33 percent lower than the cost among non-participating families. 

So far, Blues Project participants have been selected from among women who were already receiving prenatal care. This limits the conclusions we can draw about the program’s effectiveness for other at-risk mothers, many of whom seek prenatal care either very late or not at all. Making the program available to a wider population will not only help more mothers and babies, but also strengthen our understanding of how interventions can best improve birth outcomes among at-risk families.