HealhFirst Network
216 South 3rd Avenue
Wausau, WI 54401
(800) 246-5743

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From expectations to conversations. We offer all the services you would expect health first network provides quality confidential reproductive health care, education, and nutrition counseling this month's health first podcast features Karen Zimmerman service line manager for WIC Karen's work for the WIC program at health first network for 32 years so Karen who qualifies for the WIC program. The qualifying criteria are pregnant moms breast-feeding moms moms who have children under six months of age if you're not breast-feeding, and then kids up to the age of five in those households where those people reside that gross income needs to be under hundred and 85% of poverty which an actual dollar terms. Let's say you have a mom and dad and two kids. Your annual income grows, we need to be roughly under $48,500. So if you think about it. If you're making almost $50,000 a year as a family with two kids. That's a lot of people today that work in positions where that's what their income is that number is the thing that makes us different because we are designed to help those people that make more than would they be eligible for other resources and is a stop off program to write is not a you get your here forever. It's a were helping you to attain the next goal right and the other thing that we do that makes us so that it is that step off once a year everybody that participates in the program needs to come in and do another appointment where we reevaluate all the eligibility criteria roughly every three months where contacting people to do some follow-up education or another way, in a measure on kids to see how everybody's growing and it's an opportunity for us to provide that additional education for parents with young children because as you know they change rapidly and the problems they present change rapidly and we're here to provide that just one-on-one education to help parents do the best they can to help their children grow to be the best we do a health and a diet assessment because all the counselors like is that our dietitian. So that's our focus, so if you think of the well-child visit with the nutrition focus we don't do medicine. We don't do what the doctor does but we also are trained and can identify things that would warrant a hey this is something that you maybe want to give your doctor call about because this doesn't look quite right in the program called with women infant and children know that there's something over some single beds that are rich in kids with his grandparents in a region kids and it always blended families and families now is there a lot different than they used to be part of that work are they able to get help from work yes yes and those are ones to that we really struggled to reach because they don't realize that we're here to help them as well because the child is the one that's eligible for the program. So if the child meets the criteria for eligibility. Whether it's the grandparents raising the child that dad a foster child if they qualified they can qualify for as long as they meet the criteria. If, for example, a child qualifies for badger care. They most likely would qualify income wise, even if the say the child is with grandma and grandpa and they could get the help because the child is meets the criteria so it's all about helping the children helping the children and so we really encourage anybody that is interested in at least checking it out. We can screen them over the phone. That's a simple process with a phone call. There's also some online things that people can go to Whitcomb on strong where you can just fill in your information. Your information gets passed along to us and then we give you a phone call and we can have a conversation. There is another website through the state. That's called Wisconsin well badger which is a really cool website where people who are looking for some assistance in one type of thing or another Wisconsin well badger you can do it online or you can call the number that pops up when you're looking for that is process is easy if you were did come for an appointment. What happens is you get checked in. We do have some documentation that families need to provide like a piece of mail ID check stubs and then have a conversation about where the family wants to do better and set goals in three months they come back to see us or we contact them. Then were checking in and helping them do better whatever they want. For more information visit www.health1network.org or find us on social media at health first network