Maternal Life’s Family Health Alive programs strengthen and improve marriages and families, safe birthing to reduce maternal and newborn deaths, HIV risk avoidance, and AIDS treatment and care. The programs are module-based and can be selected individually or in groups by in-country people and organizations, depending on need.

Family Health Alive programs reflect MLI’s emphasis on the dignity and respect for human life as the foundation of medical care — teaching health care providers and community educators to see a patient with eyes of mercy and not eyes of judgment and as gifts and persons rather than problems or burdens.

Family Health Alive Programs:

The Faithful House

The Faithful House that builds strong marriages and families was developed by Maternal Life in partnership with Catholic Relief Services, the foreign social outreach arm of the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops. Strong marriages form stable families, reducing multiple concurrent partnerships and HIV risk, while increasing AIDS avoidance. Strong families communicate and use their talent and resources better, enabling many to work their way out of poverty. The next phases of the Faithful House build on this strong family foundation to teach parents to evaluate the health of their children and to better understand food and nutrition, promoting the proper development of mind and body.

Safe Passages

Essential obstetrical training, neonatal care and prevention of mother to child transmission of AIDS with medicine and equipment support to prevent maternal and infant deaths through up-to-date curricula for safe birthing and newborn care techniques.

AFMED

An Advanced Family Medical Education & Development Initiative for additional physician (and where appropriate nurse and midwifery) education in family medicine. AFMED is intended to help family physicians take a leading role in health care delivery in Africa, providing primary care and preventative services, curative inpatient and outpatient care, and, where necessary, surgical and advanced obstetrical care. This additional specialty training addresses such things as C-sections, antiretroviral management, and advanced HIV care, as well as infectious diseases such a tuberculosis and malaria. AFMED is a collaboration of MLI and the National Center for Health Care Informatics (NCHCI), both of Montana. The NCHCI brings extensive experience and infrastructure in delivering high quality IT video conferencing capabilities and web-based learning applications.

Family Health Alive IT

Information technology (IT) is used for distance learning, WEB-mediated training, and modularized CD/DVD curriculums for program implementation and development. IT allows for timely implementation of new medical innovations and for health care providers in developing countries to communicate with each other and with colleagues in developed countries on a more frequent and continual basis through live air applications.

Circles of Life

A community-based program that provides education and support for HIV risk avoidance and fertility literacy, promoting abstinence before marriage and faithfulness in marriage.

The Bead System of Fertility Literacy

Knowing a man is fertile all the time, this U.S. Patented system from Maternal Life educates literate and illiterate couples about a woman’s fertility as phases in her menstrual cycle indicated by easily observable changes to her period. Different colored beads placed daily on a string represent the phases and their length in days. Maternal Life’s Bead System promotes a fully natural, non-medical means for determining a woman’s ability to achieve or avoid pregnancy.

FAMLI (Fertility Awareness + Maternal Life International)

Offers programs on AIDS Avoidance through Cultural and Behavioral Change. The cultural change component uses facilitators to modify traditional practices that can contribute to HIV infection.

A New Robe

A Parish Nursing program that provides a unique and holistic approach to HIV avoidance and care — integrating medical science, community social support, and spiritual comfort for home-based care of those who are, or could become, HIV infected. Maternal Life partnered with the Bristol-Meyers Squibb Secure the Future Foundation to develop A New Robe.