When three-month-old Lia Lee arrived at the county hospital emergency room in Merced, California, a chain of events was set in motion from which neither she nor her parents nor her doctors would ever recover. Lia's parents, Foua and Nao Kao, were part of a large Hmong community in Merced, refugees from the CIA-run "Quiet War" in Laos. The Hmong, traditionally a close-knit and fiercely people, have been less amenable to assimilation than most immigrants,...

The Maternal and Child Health Pyramid emphasizes the importance of delivering primary prevention and early intervention services at multiple levels with the focus and emphasis on strategies targeting population-based and infrastructure levels in order to have the greatest impact on the MCH population.

The Prenatal Plus program is a special program for pregnant women on Medicaid that provides case management, nutrition counseling, and psychosocial services to pregnant women who are at risk for negative maternal and infant health outcomes due to lifestyle, behavioral, and non-medical parts of a woman's life that could affect her pregnancy.