Holy Family Services

Holy Family's Mission
The mission of the service is to provide maternal and infant care within the context of the family. Services shall be rendered in a God-centered atmosphere of compassion. Every individual, as God's creation, has the right to safe, satisfying health care with respect for human dignity and cultural variations. The individual has the right to self-determination, to adequate information, and to achieve participation in all aspects of care.

About Us
If you're traveling down highway 88 through Texas's largely agricultural Rio Grande Valley, you'll see an outcropping of cheerfully painted, bright yellow buildings situated on a flat piece of land that once served as a cucumber field. This is Holy Family Birth Center, located 11 miles north of the Mexican border in the town of Weslaco. Holy Family was founded in September 1983 by Sister Angela Murdaugh, along with Sisters Mary Thompson, Damien Francois, and Ann Wojtowicz. What started here as a small clinic is now a model birth center, the oldest one in Texas, and comprises a range of facilities: six birthing suites, a clinic, a classroom, a chapel, medical storage rooms, and housing for the many resident staff, volunteers, students, and visitors.

Since its inception, Holy Family has been staffed exclusively by certified nurse-midwives and registered nurses. It has become an important clinical learning site for many student nurses and midwives. Holy Family offers students a chance to experience midwifery at its best -- in a family-centered, culturally sensitive, holistic environment that provides thorough, individualized care and teaching to its patients. Holy Family offers three and six month clinical fellowships to recently graduated nurse-midwives and accepts volunteer R.N.s for service periods of one year.

Our History
In the early 1980's, Sister Angela Murdaugh was a Certified Nurse-Midwife at Su Clinica Familiar, a community clinic supported by federal grants in the Rio Grande Valley. When she discovered that more than 1,000 pregnant women in Hidalgo county still lacked prenatal care, she decided it was time to open her own clinic. The initial grant for Holy Family was given by the Meadows Foundation, under the umbrella of Catholic Charities in the diocese of Brownsville. Seven years later, Holy Family became separately incorporated as a non-profit organization in its own right.

The past 20 years has been a time of rapid population growth and development for the Rio Grande Valley. Many families still lack access to health care. Many of Holy Family's clients are undocumented or do not have health insurance or Medicaid and cannot afford care. Holy Family also serves patients who simply choose Holy Family over other providers: we received the highest client satisfaction rating in a benchmark study completed with 33 other birth centers nationwide in 1999. Through the volunteer efforts and generous donations of its supporters, Holy Family has grown and the services it offers have widened. Besides maternity care, Holy Family offers social services, a food pantry, clothes and baby supplies, well-baby care, a variety of classes, volunteer opportunities (patients as well as staff), and transportation to the clinic for its patients.