Public health scholars and community leaders gather to highlight 20 years of the Chiles Center’s statewide contributions to the health of mothers, children and families

As they celebrated the last 20 years of successes, staff and friends of the Lawton and Rhea Chiles Center for Healthy Mothers and Babies looked toward a future of building upon the Chiles family legacy to make an even bigger difference in the lives of women, children and families.

Officials from the university, USF College of Public Health, and the community, joined by members of the Chiles family, gathered Feb. 23 for a special tribute to Rhea Chiles, wife of the late Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles. Rhea Chiles passed away Nov. 8 at age 84 at her home in Anna Maria Island, Fla.

Rhea Chiles shared her husband’s advocacy for public health issues related to reducing high rates of infant mortality and prematurity, leading to the founding of the USF College of Public Health’s Lawton and Rhea Chiles Center for Healthy Mothers and Babies in 1996. The center gained a permanent freestanding building on the USF Tampa campus in 2001. This year marks the 20^th anniversary of the research, program and policy institute, which has attracted more than $88 million in grants and garnered the respect of maternal and child health experts across the U.S. and abroad.

“Lawton and Rhea Chiles were visionaries who made a difference in the lives of Floridians. Their great legacy was grounded in knowing that thriving communities begin with healthy mothers and babies,” said USF System President Judy Genshaft. “They understood that the best way to secure the future was by investing in children. At USF, we share that commitment and pledge to act upon it for decades to come.”

In their remarks, Chiles Center Founding Director Charles Mahan, MD, dean and professor emeritus of the College of Public health, and current Chiles Center Director William Sappenfield, MD, MPH, professor and chair of the Department of Community and Family Health, bridged the rich history of the center with plans for its future.  They were joined by several other speakers from Chiles Center’s past and present.

“The Chiles’ idea was that the center would be a think tank, a way to come up with new programs to help Florida and the United States move up in the world in terms of our mother and baby outcomes,” Mahan said.

“Rhea and Lawton Chiles worked as a team. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a couple in public life who were so totally linked together in their thinking… and that was so often seen in their deep, honest interest in mothers and children.”

“We’ve now discovered that our (greatest) impact on a pregnancy is not only with the mother, but it may even start with the mother’s mother,” Dr. Sappenfield said.

“It’s the mother’s health care and preventive practices that tend to define what happens to the entire family,” he said. “So, we need to address the overall health of women across their life course, especially in the early years, because if we have healthy women we have healthy children and families – which all adds to the health of the community.”

Among the Chiles Center’s accomplishments over the years:

• Provides technical assistance to Healthy Start Coalitions so that they can more meaningfully use maternal and child health data.
• Expanded prenatal care and outreach childbirth education to low-income pregnant women.
• Began the Central Hillsborough Healthy Start, which later transitioned from its university-based Chiles Center location to become a successful freestanding community organization serving the needs of East Tampa. The program grew from a $2 million grant to a diversified non-profit organization, known as REACHUP, Inc., with about $15 million in funding.
• Led a national Friendly Access program, partnering with the Disney Institute, to train health department clinic staff to be more customer-service oriented in providing care.
• Florida Covering Kids and Families, working with collaborators across the state, surpassed the federal goal for Florida in enrolling people for health care coverage in the federal health insurance marketplaces.
• Founded and directs the Florida Perinatal Quality Collaborative (FPQC), which provides leadership and consultation to public and private partners across Florida, often joining perinatal quality collaboratives in other states, to launch health care quality improvement initiatives.
• Established the Annual Chiles Center Lecture, which draws leading physicians and research scientists in maternal and child health care or policy from the U.S. and Central and South American to exchange ideas.

Read the full story, including video with members of the Chiles family, at USF Health News.

Related media:
WUSF Florida Matters coverage of the Rhea Chiles tribute and LRC legacy