Baby One is a term used by Aboriginal women from Cape York when referring to their youngest child.

A key component of the Maternal, Child Health Strategy is Apunipima’s Baby One Program.

The award winning Baby One Program was launched on July 1st 2014. The program creates the opportunity to achieve real improvements in the antenatal period and the first 1,000 days of a child’s life. The support systems surrounding the program ensure the production of high quality, reliable data, using a range of meaningful quantitative and qualitative measures and indicators of improved health outcomes. These will help inform Apunipima’s Strategic Direction and initiatives aimed at closing the gap in Cape York communities.

The aims of the Baby One Program are to:

• Improve the overall health and wellbeing of families in the Cape
• Increase engagement of parents, children and families with health workers and other health providers
• Increase empowerment of health workers and mothers/carers
• Provide standardised education to health workers
• Standardise education for maternal and child health workers
• Provide increased opportunity for health workers to share timely and culturally accepted health promotion messages during the antenatal period and early years of a child’s life
• Provide pre-conceptual care for subsequent pregnancies
• Increase opportunities to improve community advocacy, leadership, partnerships and knowledge

The Baby One Program has been very successful in Cape York, resulting in the majority of women attending five or more antenatal visits and the majority of children being immunised. Appropriate care is provided in women’s homes by local community-based Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander health workers.