GARDEN GROVE, Calif. — Not every health-care professional understands the Vietnamese culture — especially the postpartum Vietnamese culture.

''The misconception is that their teeth will fall out in the future,'' says Anh-Nguyệt Nguyễn, program manager of Saint Anselm’s Cross-Cultural Community Center, explaining why some new Vietnamese moms don’t brush regularly for one month once their child is born. ''After giving birth to a baby, Vietnamese mothers must stay in bed for at least one month without doing anything. No bathing, no washing, no brushing teeth!''

While some cultural beliefs might sound harmlessly eccentric to non-Vietnamese ears, others can affect health-care access for Vietnamese mothers. St. Anselm’s Center has partnered with VietMOMS, a Vietnamese pilot program under Maternal Outreach Management Systems (MOMS), to provide maternal and child health-care services for immigrant families in Orange County. One of VietMOMS’ main goals is to educate adults on proper prenatal and postpartum care and doing so with sensitivity to a person’s ethnicity.

The program respects the mothers’ background, yet still teaches them to make proper health decisions. ''What they learn from our education class might be different from what their mothers told them at home,'' Nguyễn says. ''They learn how to choose the right thing for them, for their benefit.''

VietMOMS is one of the few health-care resources specifically for the Vietnamese community. Even MOMS, a large nonprofit health organization, initially lacked the full support for its Vietnamese clients. Since 1992, MOMS has provided services to more than 5000 mothers yearly, yet the participation rates for Vietnamese mothers remain low. Michele Silva, MOMS’ director of development, attributes the small numbers to limited translated educational materials, specific Vietnamese health research, Vietnamese staff, and funding. By resolving those needs, VietMOMS aims to increase health care access for Vietnamese families.

VietMOMS shares MOMS’ mission to help women and their families have healthy babies. Both programs provide free services such as health screenings and advice on nutrition and exercise, to mainly low-income and uninsured families. The Orange County Health Care Agency produced a 2005 report on the health status of Asians and Pacific Islanders, which indicated that 37.5 percent of Vietnamese residents lived in poverty while 24.5 percent were uninsured.

Viet MOMS is funded by a $116,000 grant from the California Endowment foundation, and MOMS staff member Ailene Lý serves as its program coordinator. Its resources will include translated Vietnamese material and more bilingual Vietnamese staff to accommodate the needs of limited or non-English speaking families. Also, to build community relationships, the group is partnering with Nhân Hoà Health Care Clinic as well as St. Anselm’s.

With VietMOMS set to fully launch next spring, this year is dedicated to program planning and gathering appropriate research. Through conducting community-needs assessments and focus-group sessions, the coordinators discovered that compromising culture and health-care education was a major concern for Vietnamese families.

The grandparents feared that younger parents would become too ''Americanized'' and forget their culture. Meanwhile, the young women expressed difficulty in reconciling their family traditions with today’s health education and practices.

The group intends to validate both.

''We want them to maintain the Vietnamese culture, the traditional practices,'' Lý says. ''At the same time, we want to give them the health education here so that way they can make the right choices for them and for their families.''

The program strives to involve and educate all of the family members. ''When we help a mom, we don’t help a mom alone, we reach out to the whole family,'' Lý says. The grandparents in the focus groups appreciated VietMOMS’ incorporation of culture. Some also wanted to learn about modern health practices for themselves. Surprised and pleased, Lý says, ''They thanked us for including them and for considering their points of view.''

However, some challenges remain.

Certain cultural preferences, such as limited home visitors during the mother’s first trimester, make it difficult for Vietnamese to receive services like prenatal care. Traditionally, only close friends and kin may interact with the Vietnamese mother in the early stages of pregnancy; no strangers, which can include health professionals.

Mỹ-Hạnh Nguyễn, the program coordinator at Nhân Hoà Clinic, says she believes that Vietnamese mothers should be educated on prenatal care benefits. Studies show that early intervention, through proper diet and exercise, can improve birth outcomes and prevent premature births and low birth weight. VietMOMS is working with Nhân Hoà to develop outreach strategies for its prenatal-care component.

Creating access to health-care resources in largely immigrant communities also requires proper translation services. The 2000 U.S. Census shows that 43.2 percent of Orange County Vietnamese households live in linguistic isolation, the highest out of the Asian subgroups.

Trang Thái, a client, says she feels comfortable and close to mainly the Vietnamese staff. Throughout her year in MOMS, the coordinators helped her support her 3-year-old daughter, Bảo Ngọc, and 6-month-old son, Bảo Long. She says she is more self confident in her parenting skills thanks to the group’s guidance.

VietMOMS aims to ensure that mothers, such as Thái, feel secure in all aspects of the program when receiving assistance. ''We need to make sure we speak her language,'' Lý says.