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CON awarded service grant for prenatal care The Community Foundation Serving Coastal South Carolina has awarded $10,000 to MUSC’s College of Nursing for a program entitled Madre y Nino (Mother and Child) from its 2002 Open Grants Program.  The Community Foundation’s grant will be used to fund essential prenatal care for unfunded Hispanic women and their babies on John’s Island. “The Community Foundation is clearly committed to finding the deepest needs in our community and working toward meeting those needs in creative and valuable ways,” said Catherine Baldesari, grantee and director of the Madre y Nino program. Baldesari is a certified nurse-midwife on faculty at the College of Nursing and director of the nurse-midwifery faculty practice at the Family Medicine Center. “I am thrilled that The Community Foundation has joined our efforts to bring prenatal care to a rural underserved group of women and babies residing in our community,” said Baldesari. The College of Nursing has been working with Our Lady of Mercy's Wellness House, a mission health center on John's Island, and Duke Endowment funding to provide prenatal care to Hispanic women and their babies. “Most of the pregnant women we care for are migrant workers who are ineligible for Medicaid funding,” said Annette Moranville, a registered nurse and director of the Wellness House. “A certified nurse-midwife from the College of Nursing has provided prenatal care one day a week for the last four years at the Wellness house, but the demand for care has more than doubled in that time. Another day each week was required to meet the needs of the growing Hispanic population on our Sea Islands.” The Community Foundation stepped in to provide that additional day each week at the Wellness House for an entire year. Now, the Hispanic women and their babies once again have full access to adequate prenatal care; important care they would otherwise be unable to obtain.     Catalyst Online is published weekly, updated as needed and improved from time to time by the MUSC Office of Public Relations for the faculty, employees and students of the Medical University of South Carolina. Catalyst Online editor, Kim Draughn, can be reached at 792-4107 or by email, catalyst@musc.edu. Editorial copy can be submitted to Catalyst Online and to The Catalyst in print by fax, 792-6723, or by email to petersnd@musc.edu or catalyst@musc.edu. To place an ad in The Catalyst hardcopy, call Community Press at 849-1778.