Novel program helps care for moms along with their babies
MOMI PODS improves health outcomes by providing primary care for adults in need.
Lachaela Brooks knew she had to get out.
About eight years ago, she was in an abusive relationship in Cleveland. She was pregnant with her second child and didn’t know where to go, so she and her 7-year-old daughter fled to Columbus. Her mother was the only person she knew here.
“When I came down here, I was just distraught. I was fleeing a domestic violence relationship, and I didn’t have any care established,” she says. “I didn’t know anybody and I was pregnant, so I needed care.”
Her decision to seek that maternity care at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center has paid more dividends than she could have imagined in that moment.
As she was preparing to have her second child, she learned about a program that would help her get crucial care for herself while also ensuring the health of her children.
Support for moms and babies
Brooks admits she didn’t have the bandwidth to worry much about her own health. It’s hardly uncommon for a single mother of two young children.
“As a parent, you’re always on the go for your child, but it’s really hard to stop and set time for yourself,” Brooks says.
But not long before Brooks’ arrival in Columbus, a novel program launched at Ohio State to help people just like her. Seuli Brill, MD, professor of Internal Medicine at The Ohio State University College of Medicine, developed a mother-infant program called Multimodal Maternal Infant Perinatal Outpatient Delivery System (MOMI PODS) to help ensure the health of mothers by providing primary care services.
Dr. Brill works as a practicing physician in pediatrics and internal medicine, and as a physician-scientist who conducts maternal child health research. Early in her career, she noticed she was getting a lot of referrals from colleagues about patients with specific health conditions such as congenital heart disease that could complicate a pregnancy.
Because she’s a pediatrician, she’d often find herself pulling double duty once those patients had their babies. Many of the mothers were not seeing a doctor regularly, and their need for primary care was acute.
“I just noticed that I was taking care of the mom just as much in those newborn and early infant visits,” Dr. Brill says.
It got her thinking bigger.
“If I were doing this for 80% of the moms who were my patients, I was imagining it was not a unique scenario. And I was thinking, ‘Well, what about all the other moms who are in clinical settings where their health care needs can’t be met, and how do we address that problem?’”
Dr. Brill became specifically interested in tracking people who have gestational diabetes during pregnancy, as their risk for developing diabetes later in life tends to be higher. She wrote a grant proposal to fund a program that would provide dual care for mothers with gestational diabetes and their babies, then mentioned it casually during a 2017 meeting with some statewide health agencies.
“They just stopped the meeting and said, ‘Well, we’d like to hear more about it. Can you have a presentation ready for us in a week?’” she recalls.
MOMI PODS launched about a year later, providing care to both moms and babies at a single appointment during the child’s first year. It now supports the care of about 750 moms and infants per year across nine locations in central Ohio.
“I felt like it really needed to be risk aligned, so trying to not only focus on people with the history of gestational diabetes, but also on those who have other adverse pregnancy outcome risk factors,” Dr. Brill says.
“Those are things that were aligned with the main drivers of maternal mortality, but then also aligned with things that could be acted on in the postpartum period to prevent chronic disease in the future.”
Expanding to fill a need
The program receives funding from the Ohio Department of Medicaid’s Care Innovation and Community Improvement Program (CICIP), which was created by the state legislature in 2018 to help improve the lives of low-income Ohioans. In 2023, the National Institutes of Health awarded Dr. Brill’s team a five-year, $3.8 million grant to study how different models of care, including MOMI PODS, affect maternal health across the postpartum year. This project, MOMI Study, is co-led by Dr. Brill and her nurse-scientist colleague, Shannon Gillespie, PhD, RN, FAAN.
All of the patients served by MOMI PODS have been Ohio State patients, but Dr. Brill says she has received inquiries from health systems within and outside Ohio about how they might provide a similar program to their patients.
More than half of the program’s patients are Medicaid beneficiaries.
“If someone is already struggling to pay the rent, taking an additional four hours off of work to go to the doctor herself is really hard,” Dr. Brill says.
“And if they’re going to choose between putting food on the table and paying rent and going to the doctor, we know which one is going to win out,” Dr. Brill says.
A stellar reception
A 2024 report on MOMI PODS found that:
- 100% of postpartum patients are “happy with the program.”
- 97% would “recommend MOMI PODS to family and friends.”
- 94% could “get a MOMI PODS appointment as soon as needed.”
Brooks is among those satisfied patients.
Now 39, she delivered her fourth child in late 2025, her third at Ohio State. In the course of her care here, she has learned that she has multiple sclerosis and now sees a specialist at the Department of Neurology to get infusions twice a year to treat it.
She and her kids love Dr. Brill, and she can’t say enough good things about the program.
“She just cares, and you can’t pay for that anymore. Everybody has to work, but everybody doesn’t love their job. She loves her job,” Brooks says.
As for what she’d tell anyone who was in her position when she left Cleveland?
“I would tell them to join the program. The program has your best interest at heart, and it’s nothing but up from there.
“Ohio State just kind of embraced me. And I haven’t looked back since.”
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