Memorial hosts maternal health baby shower, offers safety training and care resources

Memorial Healthcare System turned a baby shower into a maternal-health checkpoint on April 24, 2026, drawing nearly 200 expectant mothers and families to Memorial Regional Hospital for its fourth annual Maternal Health Baby Shower. The gathering was built as community outreach, not just celebration, connecting families to care, education and support systems beyond the hospital while Memorial and Memorial Foundation used the event to push prenatal and postpartum resources into one room.

The day brought together a wide network of partners, including Healthy Start of Broward County, the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, the Florida Department of Health, the Greater Fort Lauderdale Diaper Bank, the Healthy Start Doula Program, Team Dad, Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition of Broward and Memorial Healthcare System’s Primary Care Maternal Health Program. Lauderhill Fire Rescue’s Community Paramedicine Division added infant CPR and safety training, giving the event an emergency-preparedness edge that went well beyond baby-shower fare.

Hands-on instruction covered safe infant sleep, car seat safety and infant CPR, along with warning signs expectant parents were urged to know, including decreased fetal movement, gestational diabetes and postpartum hemorrhage. That mix of education and access is the point: Memorial is using the event as a navigation tool, placing screening, prevention and support in the same setting where families are already willing to show up.

The urgency behind that approach is clear in the disparity data Memorial highlighted. The health system cited figures showing Black women are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than White women, and women over 40 are five times more likely. Florida reporting in 2026 also pointed to 2023 state data showing Black women faced 53.3 pregnancy-related deaths per 100,000 births, underscoring why Memorial has been leaning into more coordinated prenatal care. Terri-Ann Bennett, MD, who was named chief of Maternal-Fetal Medicine in April 2023, has led a division Memorial says was established just over three years ago and is focused on high-risk pregnancies, including preeclampsia, placenta accreta spectrum and gestational diabetes.

The baby shower also sat inside a larger investment in maternity infrastructure. Memorial Regional Hospital’s Family Birthplace and Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital NICU are both designated Level IV, and Memorial says the Level IV NICU is the only one in Broward County. The Family Birthplace completed a $68 million expansion and renovation in 2025, a sign that the system is building the space, staffing and specialty care to match the outreach. After four years of these showers, the real measure will be whether Memorial can tie the event to stronger screening uptake, earlier risk detection and more reliable follow-through before and after delivery.