BATON ROUGE -- Woman's Hospital in Louisiana is now the sixth recipient in the state to distribute Maternal Health and Newborn Supply Kits.

These kits are part of the Maternal Health and Newborn Supply Kit program, a joint venture between the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and Baby2Baby, a non-profit.

The kits can include diapers, wipes, formula, and breastfeeding pumps. The initiative launched two years ago targeting three states -- Arkansas, New Mexico, and Louisiana -- because of their poverty and maternal mortality rates.

Five organizations have already distributed about 2,000 throughout Louisiana, and Woman's Hospital is the sixth to join the effort.

"To be able to have these key essential items right after you give birth is huge to our families," Woman's Hospital Cheri Johnson said
The kits are designed to help alleviate the financial and emotional burdens that can come with a new child.

"That is really important because again, there's so much we take for granted that people know to do, or we think that they can afford to do and so some of these things can really help to alleviate those expenses," Senator Regina Barrow (D-Baton Rouge) said.

Congresswoman Julia Letlow (R-Louisiana) distributed the first two kits at the Women's Hospital to two new families. She is reintroducing a bill in Congress called the Nest Act, which would establish a pilot program at the Department of Health and Human Services to distribute these kits on a wider scale.

The funds would come from both the federal government and private sources.

"but it's also a public-private partnership so you have to have that private buy-in, which is exactly what's happening with the Woman's Hospital as well. Yes, that's a perfect example of a public-private partnership," Letlow said.

Through public-private partnerships, the department would work with community-based organizations, hospitals, and more to distribute these kits.

"We have a lot of what we call rural healthcare deserts and so this will also provide those services to underserved areas, so I'm excited to see it all the way through," Letlow said.

Congresswoman Letlow says passing the Nest Act would mean prioritizing the distribution of kits to parents in lower-income families and communities with the highest maternal mortality rates.