Tuesday, May 13, 2025
Episcopal Health Services, through its St. John’s ICARE Foundation and in partnership with the Allied Foundation, hosted a diaper giveaway on April 9, to support local mothers and provide essential resources to families in need.
Over 75 families signed up to receive diapers, which were distributed outside St. John’s Episcopal Hospital, in Far Rockaway.
The drive aligned with the ICARE Foundation’s mission to elevate maternal care by supporting local mothers who may struggle to afford basic necessities like diapers.
According to TotalCareABA.com, an organization of therapists helping families with children on the autism spectrum, families with newborns and infants spend an average of $70 per month on diapers.
Nancy Leghart, and the executive director of the ICARE Foundation, which works with St. John’s Episcopal Hospital, and Episcopal Health Services, said that the giveaway was a great way to help low-income families access the products they need.
“Diapers are very expensive, and communities with low-income families have difficulty purchasing diapers,” Leghart said. “Babies need to be covered. We held our first diaper and hygiene product drive last year, and since we’re opening our brand new labor delivery recovery and postpartum unit, we thought this would be a great way to get people to learn about the new unit as well as give out diapers.”
According to the National Diaper Bank Network, one in four parents miss work or school to care for a child because they can’t afford the diapers required to keep the baby in child care. And without clean diapers, the network says, babies become exposed to potential health risks and toxic stress, and mothers are at risk for maternal depression.
The Allied Foundation has been helping to provide care for mothers and families in need since it was founded in 2015, and donated all of the diapers that were given away last week. It provided 5,400 diapers for the event, has given away 3.85 million diapers since 2019, and plans to give out its 4 millionth diaper this year.
Heather Edwards, the foundation’s executive director, said that one in two families struggle to afford sufficient supplies for their babies, and those who can’t afford diapers resort to unsafe practices. She added that Allied has partnered with a number of nonprofits as well as St. John’s Hospital to help address the issue, and she hopes the diaper bank created by the foundation can help provide mothers with the supplies they need.
“Not having enough diapers for your baby impacts mom’s mental health, and that of the entire family,” Edwards said. “We aim to change that by providing diapers free of charge. “Through our partnerships, we can foster a healthier start to life for baby, mom and the entire family.”
The ICARE Foundation was founded in 2021, and has helped support charitable and educational activities of Episcopal Health Services.
The hospital also showed other ways that it was emphasizing maternal care at the giveaway, highlighting its new labor, delivery, recovery and postpartum unit, coming this summer.
The diaper giveaway also offered families the opportunity to schedule appointments, check-ins and first-time visits with doctors.
Dr. Jacqueline Marecheau, chair of St. John’s’ department of obstetrics and gynecology, said that events like the diaper giveaway allow the hospital to continue to help mothers in need in their communities, and that it plans to continuing hosting them.
“This event is new and dear to my heart, because a lot of the patients in our community are underserved and in part marginalized,” Marecheau said. “To offer diapers to them helps decrease that burden on them, and decreases the social determinants at play.”
Edwards said that babies typically need eight to 12 diapers a day, and no safety-net programs such as SNAP, WIC or Medicaid allocate funding for diapers.
She added that mothers without access to clean diapers often resort to dangerous practices, such as reusing soiled diapers, or leaving them on for extended periods of time, which can lead to rashes, infections and, in severe cases, hospitalization.
Anahy Casimiro, a Far Rockaway resident, said that events like these are important for the community, to give new mothers in the area a sense of relief.
“For me, events like this can be just in case of emergency, or for women who might not have someone or something to rely on,” Casimiro said. “If there aren’t any programs or things going on where they can get these, they should have something where they would be able to go out and get them.”
