Sylvia Crews has worked in child care for more than 20 years. In the past five, she looked after nine children under the age of three at her home based-child care service, LTH Infants and Toddlers Center. But in mid-March, she decided to close her center.

Crews helps support her parents and is raising children herself, so expenses add up. She paid her two employees as long as she could, but in June she had to lay them off.

Summer has just begun for students and teachers nationwide, but next school year already feels too near. With COVID-19 data indicating an impending second surge, the menu of school re-entry scenarios is changing daily. The urge to reopen is understandable and attractive — as the economy restarts, so do jobs. Students need socialization as an essential element of development. Patchwork remote learning programs have not been successful as a holdover until in-person school returns. All this is true and is significant when weighing how and when to reopen.

Life was never going to be easy for Latasha Carrington. She has known that since she was a child. In her teens she spent five years in foster care, with 15 families. She had her first child at 19. Now, at 31, Carrington is the mother of seven, sharing a cramped apartment with her husband and children in the District’s Ward 8, where 31 percent of families live in poverty in one of the wealthiest cities in the country.

Carrington has always worked when she could, and she has always had to worry — about having a place to live, having enough food to eat, providing for her children. She has heard the people who criticize her for having too many babies. “No point going back and forth. I can’t say anything to them that will change their minds, so I don’t say anything,” she said. “I just smile.”

Warrior-Scholar Project ran its first academic boot camp in 2012, providing free one-of-a-kind services to enlisted veterans that would truly empower them in the transition to higher education. Just as military boot camp instills the warrior ethos, our academic boot camps push students through rigorous coursework to instill the ethos of a scholar. We commit to students that one or two weeks with us will pay dividends throughout their entire academic and professional careers.

African American women are up to three times more likely to die of pregnancy related-causes than white women, and infant mortality in D.C. is among the highest in the nation.

A newly-expanded initiative is targeting those high mortality rates.

The D.C. Safe Babies Safe Moms Initiative takes a holistic, integrative approach.

MedStar Health in Washington, D.C., has announced a $27 million commitment from the A. James and Alice B. Clark Foundation in support of an initiative to address high mortality rates among mothers and children in the national capital region.

The health of mothers and infants is top of mind for advocates as COVID-19 poses a new, unexpected threat to maternal care in the United States. During this unprecedented time, the mental health of new mothers is of particular concern as the number of postpartum depression cases are on the rise. Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-Ill.), a registered nurse, and Every Mother Counts founder Christy Turlington Burns join Washington Post Live on Tuesday, June 30 at 10:30 a.m. ET to discuss the state of maternal and infant health in the U.S., the high rate of pregnancy complications for black women and how community leaders, health-care workers and governments are supporting new mothers and their children in the era of COVID-19.

MS. WINFIELD CUNNINGHAM: Good morning, and welcome to Washington Post Live. I’m Paige Winfield Cunningham, a health policy reporter and anchor of the Health 202 newsletter here at The Post, and I’m delighted to welcome my first guest this morning, Christy Turlington Burns. You know her as one of the most successful supermodels in American culture, but she’s also founder of Every Mother Counts, which is a nonprofit that works to make pregnancy and childbirth safe for mothers everywhere.

We’re talking to Christy this morning about maternal mortality and the state of maternal health in the U.S., especially amid the coronavirus pandemic. So, excited to speak with you, Christy.

I wanted to start out by asking you to share a little bit of your own story with us. We know that maternal health became every important to you about 16 years ago when you experienced your own complication. Can you share a little bit about that?

WASHINGTON – Children’s National Hospital today announced a $36 million investment from the A. James & Alice B. Clark Foundation to provide families with greater access to mental health care and community resources. 

“We are deeply grateful for the longstanding support and generosity of the Clark Foundation and their desire to invest in the D.C. community,” said Kurt Newman, M.D., President and CEO of Children’s National Hospital. “The impact of their philanthropy will enable Children’s National to provide better maternal care and mental health resources for mothers and families, which could provide life-long benefits to children in our community.”

On-Ramps to Careers is a nonprofit that focuses on connecting students in minority and underserved communities to career paths in the tech field.