Assistance program
Healthy Start Initiative
$1.1 Billion committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Health Resources and Services Administration, Health and Human Services, Department of
- Assistance
- Project Grants
- CFDA number
- 93.926
- What it does
- The purpose of the Healthy Start (HS) program is to improve health outcomes before, during, and after pregnancy, and reduce racial/ethnic differences in rates of infant death and adverse perinatal outcomes. The HS program provides grants to high-risk communities with infant mortality rates at least 1.5 times the U.S. national average and high rates of other adverse perinatal outcomes (e.g., low birthweight, preterm birth, maternal morbidity and mortality). HS works to reduce the disparity in health status between the general population and individuals who are members of racial or ethnic minority groups.
- Who benefits
- Service area residents, particularly women and infants 0-18 months, in areas with significant perinatal health disparities.
- Who applies
- Not Applicable
- Authorized by
- 42 U.S.C. § 254C-8
- Program site
- http://www.hrsa.gov ↗
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
Top recipients
By dollars committed.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments