Rx Kids — the nation’s first community-wide prenatal and infant cash prescription program — has officially launched in Detroit, marking its largest expansion to date.

Announced by Detroit Mayor Mary Sheffield as her first major initiative upon taking office, the program provides Detroit families with $1,500 prenatally and $500 per month for a baby’s first six months, reaching approximately 8,000 babies born in the city each year.

Applications for Detroit families are open at RxKids.org or the City of Detroit website at DetroitMi.gov.

“Bringing Rx Kids to Detroit is a powerful milestone for this program,” said Dr. Mona Hanna, founder and director of Rx Kids and associate dean of public health at the Michigan State University College of Human Medicine. “Together, we’re delivering a proven, efficient program that strengthens family financial security, improves health outcomes, and builds a brighter, more equitable future for Detroit’s moms, babies, and entire communities.”

The program was originally launched in Flint, Michigan, in 2024 by Hanna, named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2016 in recognition of her role in exposing the Flint water crisis through her research on lead levels in children’s blood. RxKids has now grown to 29 communities in the state of Michigan and has delivered more than $24 million to more than 5,900 families.

The cash assistance program was born from Hanna’s recognition that families are often at their poorest during pregnancy and infancy — when babies cost about $20,000 in the first year of life alone — and that the U.S. remains the only wealthy nation with no national maternal or paid parental leave program.

“Expanding opportunity in cities means investing in families and in the conditions that allow children to thrive,” said Wendy Lewis Jackson, managing director of Kresge’s Detroit Program. “Rx Kids is a practical, dignity-centered approach that helps stabilize households in that critical first year of a child’s life.”

Kresge is among a coalition of philanthropic, corporate and public partners supporting Rx Kids in Detroit, alongside the City of Detroit, the Skillman Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Ballmer Group, General Motors, Jamie and Denise Jacob Family Foundation, Max M. & Marjorie S. Fisher Foundation, Community Foundation of Southeast Michigan, Huntington Bank, Children’s Foundation of Michigan, Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation of Michigan, and United Way for Southeastern Michigan.

The state of Michigan has also committed $250 million to expand the program to additional high-need communities over the next three years.