Local News:
Fall Months Big For Infant Health
Thu, September 29, 2011
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KMUW / Briana O’Higgins
Additional information at the bottom of the page.
The fall months have been dedicated to awareness campaigns around issues of maternal, fetal and infant health beginning with infant mortality awareness in September, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome in October, and Prematurity in November.
Kansas has long struggled with infant mortality, finding itself at or near the bottom of national lists. But there is also progress to celebrate; in 2009 then governor Kathleen Sibelius formed the Kansas Blue Ribbon Panel on Infant Mortality, bringing together several organizations and experts to improve birth outcomes in the state. This year the state took another step forward with the establishment of a Fetal and Infant Mortality Review project – FIMR - through the Sedgwick County Health Department.
Shalae Harris leads theproject, abstracting information from charts, and creating case summaries of individual deaths to create a full picture of the circumstances surroundingeach infant loss.
Harris: Infant mortality is not a health problem, but a social problem with health consequences, so once you start looking at those deidentified cases – that maybe mom entered prenatal care at 24 weeks, but why did she enter at 24 weeks, was it that she couldn’t get to prenatal appointments earlier, was it because she didn’t have access to insurance so she couldn’t get a provider… so you can see that there are all these underlying issues that effect the birth outcomes that these moms had.
The most recent data on infant mortality in the United States ranks Kansas 40th overall, and 50th in black infant mortality. And Harris says at first those in the field thought access was the key.
Harris: They would just get in the door and then everything would be solved, and that is not the case. Access to care involves how is that mom treated whether she is black, single, married, how is she treated? Is she given the same treatment of care when she walks through that door?
Black babies are more likely to be preterm or low birth weight, which is why many are calling black infant mortality a civil rights issue. Black mothers are less likely to have access to prenatal natal care and education, and more likely to experiences stressors from things like financial hardship and racism.
Harris: Obviously if a mom is worried about survivability, how is she going to pay that electric bill or keep the electric on, where is she going to get her milk and how is she going to pay that cell phone bill or whatever, but she is not going to take that prenatal vitamin…and if she is worried about if her child has a safe place to get to that bus stop, I mean you know she is not walking and exercising in that neighborhood then, she is not getting the exercise she need prenatally.
Harris says the great part about the FIMR project is that it has the ability to be a change agent in the county and the state because so many people with diverse expertise are now working on the state’s issues around infant mortality.
Harris: We have about 30 members now, and we also have maternal and child advocates that come together, and it is amazing to see all these hospitals, and all of our pediatricians and family practice and obstetricians come together and look at the same case and make recommendations on it.
One of those members is the SIDS network of Kansas. SIDS or Sudden Infant Death Syndrome is a large part of infant mortality in Kansas and across the US, and will be recognized nationally next month.
SIDS is the leading cause of infant death between the age of one month and a year, and the third highest overall, falling behind congenital defects and low birth weight.
Christy Shunn is the executive director of the SIDS network of Kansas. She says many think SIDS is completely unavoidable, and while some cases might be, many are not.
Shunn: These are babies that were apparently healthy infants and they went to sleep and they stopped breathing somewhere in that sleep time, found unresponsive and were unable to be revived.
Shunn’s message is mainly about the ABCs of sleep – encouraging parents to put their babies to bed alone, on their backs in a crib, but her small organization of just two full time employees struggles to council families that have lost a child and get the word out about safe sleep to the entire state.
That is where something like the Blue Ribbon Panel has also come in handy, integrating messages to improve infant mortality rates across the state.
Shunn: So we have put our efforts together in educating the community in trying to lower infant mortality across the board, and certainly SIDS is in there, safe sleep is in there… because we know that a baby that is premature of low birth weight is a higher risk for SIDS, so I am trying to reduce SIDS by encouraging people to take care of themselves so that they don’t have a preterm birth, so that they don’t have a low birth weight baby and then if they do, they definitely do practice safe sleep.
Preliminary numbers for 2010 released by the state in July indicate a slight decrease in infant mortality in the state, but both Schunn and Harris say they didn’t get too excited because Kansas’ numbers have historically jumped around a bit. However, they can’t ignore the recent formation of the Blue Ribbon Panel and the Fetal and Infant Mortality Review project, and hope this time those numbers may continue to go down.
Additional information:
Kansas Blue Ribbon Panel on Infant Mortality
Table of US compared to other countries.
Information about the SIDS network’s community baby shower for safe sleep happening this weekend.
