MCMCH was the first maternal and child health advocacy group in Michigan with a full-time professional staff. For nearly two decades it has educated and informed those in government who make laws, write regulations, and implement policies affecting the health of babies, children, and their mothers.

MCMCH believes

• Advocacy is most effective when practiced in a collaborative environment. The MCMCH Board of Directors is an organization of diverse partners, with a consultant staff working closely with coalitions around the state so that our collective voices speak louder than we might as individuals.
• Maternal and child health includes more than medical services. Poverty, inadequate education, abuse and neglect -- all these are intimately connected with a child's ability to reach his or her full potential in life, and a mother or family's ability to provide a positive, nurturing environment.
• Any effort to improve the health of Michigan's mothers and kids must focus on the big picture and the future -- even as we are working on today's details.

PRINCIPLES

MCMCH achieves its vision by adhering to a carefully articulated set of principles. MCMCH:

• believes assuring the health of every woman, child and family is essential to the future quality of life in Michigan.
• considers early and sustained prevention and intervention to assure the health of every family cost effective policy.
• understands that the health needs of women, children and families are intertwined with their social, emotional, financial and educational needs, and that comprehensive policies are necessary to effect and assure change.
• advocates for public policy at the national, state and local levels. It does not provide services, nor does it advocate on behalf of policy intended only to benefit individual members of the Council.
• participates in coalitions with other organizational and individual advocates and a variety of public and private stakeholders.
• maintains a non-partisan status and does not accept state government funding.

PRIORITIES

In Michigan, and across the nation, health systems, services, and policies are changing -- often very rapidly. MCMCH ensures that its advocacy stays focused on what is best for families and children by:

• developing positions on policies, programs and services in partnership with consumers and consumer advocacy organizations, and never in isolation.
• participating in discussion on quality/outcome indicators, service standards, and patient/consumer satisfaction issues, especially in the transition to capitated managed care for Medicaid and Children's Special Health Care Services.
• collaborating with groups such as the Consumer Health Care Coalition and Parent Leadership Program to involve consumers as partners in the policy development process.

MCMCH strongly believes that a critical outcome of the current round of efforts to reorganize and reform state health systems and policies should be an integrated, coordinated approach to health. In such an approach:

• consumers benefit through less time and energy spent navigating the system, and ultimately through better care.
• the state benefits through elimination of structural and fiscal redundancy.
• health systems benefit through consumer satisfaction and an ability to better accomplish the business of quality health care.

MCMCH continues to work toward elimination of barriers to care, and actively promotes that women, children and families have choices of quality health care.