Helen Kim, MD

Dr. Helen Kim is the co-founder and director of the Hennepin Healthcare Mother-Baby Program and Redleaf Center for Family Healing and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Minnesota. She is a perinatal psychiatrist who is committed to empowering women and providing outstanding mental health care for all, particularly those most impacted by trauma and discrimination.

Following psychiatry training at Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Kim has been a leader in advancing new models of integrative, two-generation (parent-child) healing that address root causes that undermine wellbeing, such as childhood trauma, toxic stress, poverty, and discrimination. Dr. Kim co-founded the Hennepin Women’s Mental Health Program, Minnesota’s first reproductive psychiatry program and then went onto co-found the Mother-Baby Program whose mission is to save and improve the lives of mothers and young children. Signature programs of the MB Program include the Mother-Baby Day Hospital, an intensive program for perinatal women that is the 4^th of its kind in the U.S. and the first in Minnesota, and the HopeLine, a phone line that offers support and connection to resources for distressed pregnant and postpartum mothers, their family members and providers. In its first 6 years, the MB Program has served more than 3000 families, and secured seed funding to expand into the Redleaf Center for Family Healing. Grounded in social justice and a commitment to providing exceptional care, the new Redleaf Center will expand the psychotherapy services of the Mother-Baby Program, add additional programs to support fathers and families, offer integrative mind-body-spirit healing services, create a new teaching kitchen to promote the healing and community-building power of food, and launch an on-site childcare center that will serve all families accessing care at Hennepin Healthcare. The Redleaf Center will also include a resource hub to develop and share new models of family-centered, trauma-informed care. Through the Mother-Baby Program and the new Redleaf Center, Dr. Kim hopes to help children thrive by supporting the emotional wellbeing of parents and disrupting policies and practices that perpetuate Minnesota’s shameful maternal and child health disparities.