Healthy Babies Project, Inc. (HBP) empowers District of Columbia youth to build healthy, stable lives. HBP offers life skills training to vulnerable youth to prevent youth pregnancy; provides homeless and transient pregnant/parenting youth with evidence-based, one-on-one case management and peer support so they can build healthy families; and empowers youth with job readiness and advocacy training so they can move out of poverty. HBP also provides short-term crisis housing for pregnant and parenting youth as they work toward the goals of healthy birth outcomes and independent living or family reunification. In 2024, HBP plans to renovate and reopen a longer-term site that will offer young mothers and their children housing and wraparound services for 12-24 months.
Each year HBP serves 200 youth (pregnant, parenting, and non-parenting), plus babies, primarily in Wards 5, 7, and 8. In 2022, more than half of case-managed youth were in unstable/transitional housing, in foster care, or transient/homeless upon intake. Among case-managed youth, the number of those in stable housing tripled within a year of intake and 96% created and implemented a job readiness plan. HBP mothers have experienced zero infant mortalities in the last three years, 86% of HBP births were at normal birth weight, and less than 1% of HBP mothers have experienced repeat, unplanned pregnancy in the 12 months after program completion.
