“Rx Kids kind of was born out of kind of the goodness that we have been doing in MSU for over a century as this land-grant university to help the people of Michigan,” Hanna said. “MSU was created and built not as so many other universities to think of knowledge that just sits on the shelf.”

Hanna said MSU’s impact in human medicine has led to the creation of Rx Kids: the nation’s first community-wide maternal and infant cash prescription program. Launched in 2024 in Flint, Michigan, the program’s mission to be service-driven and population-focused helped the program.

“I feel the College of Human Medicine embodies that ethos more than anywhere else in the university because we are the first community-based medical school,” Hanna said. “And we are a medical school that actually has public health embedded in medicine.”

Hanna said the program’s goal is to eliminate poverty for moms and babies to improve health.

“This is fundamentally a maternal and infant health program,” Hanna said. “It is medicine, but it's not a pill, it's prevention. It's born out of a medical school with a mission of serving the people out of a university that was fundamentally built to help the people of the state.”

Hanna, who has been practicing medicine as a pediatrician for decades, said she’s frustrated at the lack of effort to address poverty and its role in many communities falling ill.

“And rather than kind of shortening our shoulders and saying, ‘okay, let's just keep mandating that, let's keep creating expensive after-the-fact programs,’ RxKids was this common-sense idea, like, ‘let's actually focus on prevention and make sure that babies aren't born into poverty so that we can improve their health,’” Hanna said. 

Hanna spoke on the progress the program made in Flint, pointing out the city’s spirit of innovation while providing service to those in need.

“When there's poverty in that window of having a baby, that impacts kids' lives forever, so, we started this in Flint, but just like our history of innovation, this was always going to be about more than just Flint,” Hanna said.

Now, the program is in 29 Michigan communities, with a recent launch of Rx Kids in the City of Detroit and another launch expected in the Upper Peninsula next month. As she receives emails from people across the state, Hanna said that enthusiasm for the program is growing.

“The reception for this program has been overwhelming from all kinds of folks,” Hanna said. “There is not a day that goes by when I do not get dozens of emails from people across the state, asking ‘when is it coming to my community?’”

Hanna said that the reception from community members has reached state legislature, leading to bipartisan commitment to invest $250 million to expand Rx Kids to additional high-need communities over the next three years.

“This is how we should be using government dollars,” Hanna said. "This is working, this is improving health. We are working very closely also with other states who also want to bring this evidence-based, plug-and-play, really efficient and effective program to their states."

In the end, Hanna said her life goal as a pediatrician is to make sure children receive the help and care they need, regardless of who they are or where they live.

“My life goal is to make sure that kids, no matter where they live, their future health, their future success, their future opportunity is not dictated by their zip code,” Hanna said. “My goal is to optimize the health of children and it has been phenomenal to see this program expanding so that we can impact so many more babies.”