Healthy Start Kitsap
Create Brighter Futures For Babies
Each year hundreds of children in Kitsap County are born to first-time parents experiencing social and economic barriers to health and wellness. With resources and knowledge from one-on-one nurse visits, they can advocate for themselves and create the lives that they want for themselves and their children.
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Beginning before the third trimester during pregnancy, and until the child is two, nurses visit families at home and in the community to share resources, perform health checks, and partner with them to uncover their innate strengths and skills as parents. Our goal is to reach more families than ever. Will you join us?
Sponsor a Child In Kitsap
Help us provide sustainable solutions for children in Kitsap County to receive the services of Nurse Family Partnership. You can sponsor with confidence, knowing that NFP consistently meets and exceeds the standards of third party organizations that evaluate charities in order to help donors make wise giving decisions.
Sponsoring a child for a month in this program costs (about) $500. But any amount helps.
What makes Nurse Family Partnership unique?
Nurse-Family Partnership® is an evidence-based community health program with 45 years of research showing significant improvements in the health and lives of first-time mothers and their children affected by social and economic inequity. Nurse-Family Partnership succeeds by having specially educated nurses regularly visit first-time moms, starting early in the pregnancy and continuing until the child’s second birthday. Research consistently proves that the partnership between a nurse and the parent is a winning combination that makes a measurable, long-term difference for the whole family. Find out more including data results, by visiting the NFP national website.
Who We Are
Healthy Start Kitsap began as an offshoot of the Silverdale Rotary Club circa 1997. Several Rotarians were concerned about a rash of child abuse cases prominent in the local news and asked the question "what can be done to PREVENT child abuse?"
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In 2003, with the enthusiastic help of the Kitsap County Health District, we began to investigate how to partner to bring a Nurse Family Partnership (NFP) program to Kitsap. Nurse-Family Partnership serves families facing concentrated and overlapping barriers to accessing the care they need, throughout the first 1,000 days of pregnancy through the child’s second birthday, offering trusted resources and information to achieve the future they want for themselves and their children.
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NFP is one of the few evidence-based programs identified as a child abuse PREVENTION program, with results including 48% less likelihood to suffer child abuse and neglect, and children 67% less likely to experience behavioral and intellectual problems at age 6. This program really works to improve the young family's life for this and future generations. Current RAND studies of the NFP program document a savings of $5 (in future community costs) for every $1 spent on this program.
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Even better, by operating through an Agency Fund at Kitsap Community Foundation, we can now put 99% of all all donations straight toward the program.
​Find out more about Kitsap’s Nurse-Family Partnership® program by visiting their page here.