Make sure the women in your life know about the importance of early prenatal care.

Encourage the people you know to get preventative care.  It's better for their health, and better for our community if we can reduce the visits to hospital emergency rooms that can be prevented.

Let your state congressional officials know that you support the United Way public policy agenda for 2011, which focuses on:

• Preventing costly health problems by rebuilding the state's public health system through a separate Department of Public Health.
• Maintaining PeachCare and Georgia's Medicaid programs for low-income or medically needy pregnant women and children as well as for others with disabilities.
• Leveraging federal dollars to promote medical homes among underserved Georgians through federally qualified and school-based health centers, with services available to minors upon parental permission.
• Reducing the incidence of low birth weight newborns by fully funding the Georgia Department of Community Health's "Planning for Healthy Babies" demonstration waiver for uninsured women.
• Helping Georgians get fit, eat a nutritious diet and avoid risky behaviors by allocating resources to promote the Live Healthy Georgia campaign.

Want to advocate on the federal level? Check United Way Worldwide's policy agenda