Next week at its annual Small Business Dinner, the Chester County Chamber of Business & Industry will for the first time bestow a Nonprofit Organization of the Year award.

The inaugural award, established to “recognize exceptional achievements in building the community and enhancing the quality of those in its care; and, therefore, our County,” goes to the Maternal and Child Health Consortium of Chester County.

The Maternal and Child Health Consortium of Chester County, led by Executive Director Alain Oliver, is a leading voice for Chester County’s women, children, and families focused on ensuring “all pregnant and parenting women in Chester County have access to high-quality health care regardless of race, language, insurance status, or immigration status.”

Alain (pronounced like “align”) grew up in Florida and remembers his first job as a bag boy at Cash & Carry, a supermarket chain in Port Charlotte, Florida south of Tampa. He worked his way up to cashier when he learned all the codes for fruit and as a cashier remembers overcharging one customer $30 for a $3 bag of chips.

Oliver moved to Chester County in 2002 and began managing the Latin American Community Center in Wilmington in 2005. While in that position, a mentor recommended he get an MBA. Five years later in 2010 he finished an Executive MBA program at Penn State’s Smeal’s School of Business.

Alain enjoys living in Chester County. “I like the history. I like the topography. I like that you can just meander down some roads and have the beautiful bucolic scene unfold before your eyes. It’s just gorgeous.”

He also appreciates the number of people with deep, multi-generational roots in the county. Growing up in Florida he says, it was like no one was from Florida, everyone was from somewhere else. “Its pretty neat here.”

Like everyone new to Chester County, Oliver learned by trial and error how big Chester County is.

“Early on when I was new in this role,” he says, “I scheduled a meeting in Pottstown and then another meeting in Oxford the same day thinking both towns were on the border of Chester County that I would be fine.”

“I had no idea how big Chester County was.“

2014 was a challenging year for Alain and his staff of 25 at The Maternal and Child Health Consortium of Chester County. Healthy Start, the consortium’s flagship program, which provides perinatal through 2 years-old home visiting program teaching and reinforcing good parenting skills, was so successful that the department worked itself out of a job.

“In 2014 we discovered we had effectively worked ourselves out of a job because our health statistics in the county for infant mortality, low birth-weight, and preterm births were all 20 percent below the national average. In order to be federally funded we needed to be 150 percent of the national average.”

By breaking down and eliminating the causes of infant mortality and prematurity countywide, Oliver feels his group played a strategic role improving children’s health across the county.

To adjust Alain’s group downsized staff, cut back the number of children served and focused on the most at-risk kids all while trying to adjust to the shifting healthcare insurance marketplace.

Alain’s 2015 challenge continues to be mediating the differences between Pennsylvania’s Child Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and the Federal government’s Affordable Cara Act (ACA).

“There’s a vulnerable population out there,” states Oliver. “CHIP has done such an amazing job serving children and proving them with great healthcare. Making sure ACA has those same services, from the quality and cost perspectives,” according to Oliver, “is both a challenge and an opportunity.“

Alain and his wife Marion and their three daughters and a son, ages 8, 6, 5 and 3, reside in West Chester.