In May 2007, the Office of Minority Health (OMH), a division of the Department of Health and Human Services - launched A Healthy Baby Begins with You, a national campaign focused on raising awareness regarding the infant mortality epidemic happening right here in the United States. In 2005, the NCHS (a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) published a report on Infant Mortality. Their findings revealed that the United States ranked 30th in the world in infant mortality - behind many European countries, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, and Israel. Their reports also indicated that there are some cities in the U.S. that are on par with third world countries in regards to infant mortality, most of the deaths are among pre-term infants, and that the U.S. has a very high rate of pre-term births.
Facts don't lie. Statistics show that infant mortality rates among African American babies are twice as high as their Caucasian and Latino counterparts. Studies also show that the majority of infant mortality cases are completely preventable through education, healthy choices and awareness. Clinically defined as the rate at which newborns die during their first year of life per thousand live births within a geographical region or institution, infant mortality is widely considered the barometer by which the health of an entire population is gauged. These number and statistics are staggering, but A Healthy Baby Begins with You campaign is committed to bringing this epidemic to the national forefront and ending health disparities among racial and ethnic minorities. As the national spokesperson for A Healthy Baby Begins with You campaign Tonya Lewis Lee is committed to the campaign and its goals.
A Healthy Baby Campaign Goals
Continue to raise awareness for the infant mortality awareness campaign.
Add pre-conception and inter-conception health messages to the current campaign.
Develop activities targeted to our young adult demographic (18 years and up).
Create targeted health messages emphasizing pre-conception health and healthcare.
Implement a “Health Ambassador” component on college campuses, by training college students to participate in community outreach
Increase OMH involvement with HBCU’s, colleges, and universities.
Strengthen the Healthy Babies campaign at the local level by fostering synergic partnership with Healthy Start Programs; Local State, County and City Health Departments; State OMHs and Community Based Organizations (CBO’s).
The Healthy Babies campaign has traveled throughout the United States – participating in and organizing successful events in major cities such as Washington, D.C., Detroit, New Orleans, New York, and Nashville; along with cities in the South and Midwest including Wichita, Kansas; Tallahassee, Fla.; and Biloxi, Miss. to name a few. And on the local level, our Healthy Babies Partnerships across the country have hosted over 60 events - bringing awareness and education to areas hardest hit by infant mortality.
Because of the extraordinary level of raised education and awareness, the campaign has impacted thousands of lives and has been a great success. OMH continues to receive requests for new events, materials distribution, seminars, health fairs and direct outreach. But one question continued to be a common theme, a common thread – whether from individuals, local communities, organizations or health departments, a similar question was asked: Now what do we do - how can we move forward, continue the dialogue, spread the word and bring nationwide exposure to this initiative?
The community was committed to being involved and doing their part, and A Healthy Baby Begins with You national spokesperson Tonya Lewis Lee was able to step up and immediately answer their questions by sharing with them, the newly created Preconception Peer Educators (PPE) Program which launched in August 2008.
The PPE launched with 3 main components: Training Goals; Key Training Concepts; and the Pilot Project.
Preconception Peer Educators (PPE) Training Goals include:
Implementing college student outreach, by focusing on targeted health messages and emphasizing preconception health and healthcare.
Training college students as peer educators.
Ensuring that peer educators are educated and equipped with materials, activities and exercises so that they, in turn, are able to train not only their college peers, but also the community at large.
Key Concepts for the Training
Health disparities and minority health
Infant mortality
African American health status and its impact on infant mortality
Preconception health, infant mortality and prematurity – What research says
Preconception care
HIV, STDs and preconception health
What a man would do
Pilot Project Preconception Peer Educators (PPE) Training
OMH, in partnership with Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs (AMCHP), CityMatCH, and the March of Dimes, conducted a pilot of the Preconception Peer Educators Program on college’s campuses.
The pilot sites are:
Fisk University and Meharry Medical College (Nashville)
Spelman College (Atlanta)
Morgan State University (Baltimore)
University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing (Philadelphia)
The PPE became an extremely successful program, but more needed to be done to bring the issue of infant mortality to the national forefront. In the Fall of 2009, Lee took her leadership role and commitment a step further and executive produced a 36-minute documentary, Crisis in the Crib: Saving Our Nation’s Babies. This extremely moving documentary focused on the issue of Infant Mortality in the African-American community and in recognition of National Infant Mortality Awareness Month, the documentary was released on Sept. 9, 2009. Much of the footage was shot during a trip to Memphis, in which Lee worked with federal and local officials, students and residents to raise awareness about the issue of infant mortality.
