Dr. Raines Milenkov’s expertise is in maternal and child health. Her academic background is in the area of social work and public health. Her community-based research and interventions focus on pregnancy, birth and maternal health outcomes and women’s preventive health among vulnerable populations including refugee women, prostituting women, and women with previous adverse birth outcomes.
She is Director of the UNT Health Science Center’s Healthy Start program a federally funded intervention to reduce perinatal health disparities. She is an appointed member of the Texas Department of State Health Services Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Task Force and holds the contract from the state to provide maternal death redaction and abstraction case preparation for review by Task Force Members. She is the current Chair of the Early Childhood Wellness Council of Tarrant County MHMR, and immediate Past Chair of the Infant Health Network. Dr. Raines-Milenkov leads the Building Bridges Initiative, a community-based project funded by the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas that provides culturally and linguistically appropriate lay health educator outreach, education and woman-centered cancer screening services to refugee communities.
Her current work builds upon years of front-line public health practice, strong professional and community partnerships and a great passion to identify and address gaps in knowledge and implement interventions for vulnerable populations of women, children and their families.