2023 Health Care Champions Nurse: Ruth Brown

Nest. It’s a prepared place for development, rest and protection for young members of a species.

For Ruth Brown and the Springfield-Greene County Health Department, it stands for nurture, empower, support and teach. And it means providing those services in the homes of pregnant women and families of newborns.

Brown coordinates the Health Department’s NEST Partnership Program offering free nurse visits for qualified families. She says the goal is to improve maternal, infant and child health outcomes in the community.

“Nurses also provide education from evidence-based curriculum, connect the family to community resources in areas of identified needs and set individualized goals and discuss progress throughout their time in the program,” Brown says, noting the services extend to child care facilities. “We serve as a resource for child care providers for any health or safety concern.”

In the role, she’s responsible for the program’s daily operations and supervises and directs the work of eight people.

Brown’s work today stems from her career start as a staff nurse on the women and newborn care unit at CoxHealth.

“While I learned so much and knew I loved working with mothers and babies, I wanted to do so in a more community-based setting,” she recalls, prompting a switch to the Health Department a year and a half in. “I quickly found that public health was my passion.”

Now, Brown is looking back on nearly 20 years in public health, where she’s handled immunizations, child care health consultations, tobacco initiatives, home visitations and case management, among many other types of care and projects.

She says that early experience championing immunizations among child care centers throughout Greene County proved helpful during the COVID-19 pandemic, when Brown as a familiar face leveraged those relationships to help mitigate the spread of the coronavirus.

“While many businesses were closed or having employees work remotely, child care centers played an integral part in the community by allowing those essential employees child care while they worked. I was able to help guide centers through mitigation strategies as recommended by the (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and in accordance with ordinances,” Brown says.

Additionally, Brown has served on the Missouri Maternal Health Action Network and the Safe Kids Springfield Advisory Board. She also represented the Health Department in overseeing the Child Care Health Consultation Program funded by the Missouri Department of Health and Human Services.

Next up in the NEST Partnership, Brown says the team is in the process of implementing a nurse home-visit program called Family Connects. She says it’s for all families with newborns.

“This is an exciting opportunity to be able to provide to the community and will build on the work we currently do,” Brown says.