My Anti-Blog For Infant Mortality Awareness Month

SEPTEMBER IS INFANT MORTALITY AWARENESS MONTH, AND WITH BLACK BABIES TWICE AS LIKELY TO DIE BEFORE THEIR FIRST BIRTHDAY THE ONLY THING I COULD WRITE WAS THIS….

I Will Not Write a Blog for Infant Mortality
Awareness Month

This is not a blog for infant mortality awareness
month. Something so weighty deserves more than to be relegated to web log. I
will not make any witty observations. I will not use any metaphors, similes,
idioms, or analogies. There will be no alliteration or onomatopoeia used to
help you get it.

 There will be
no opinions, only facts. The jarring sort that aren’t typically welcome in a
blog. This will not be entertaining. You will probably not “Like” this.

This is my virtual moment of silence for the babies
who needlessly die every year. This is my silent cry in the blogosphere for
greater awareness in the African American community where our babies are 2.3
more likely to die before their first birthday than in the white community.  This risk exists for all black women
regardless of income or education. 

This is my anti-blog for the unborn who deserve to
live to see their first birthday and my homage to those who didn’t.  

• Currently, the national infant mortality rate for Black
  babies is 13.7 per 1,000, compared to a rate of 5.6 per 1000 for White
  babies, 3.5 per 1000 for Asian babies, and 5.3 to 6 per 1000 for Latino
  babies.
• Black babies are four times as
  likely to die as infants due to complications related to low birthweight
  as compared to non-Hispanic white infants. 
  
• African Americans have 2.3
  times the infant mortality rate as non-Hispanic whites
• African Americans had 1.8 times
  the sudden infant death syndrome mortality rate as non-Hispanic whites.
• College- and graduate-school educated black mothers have
  a higher infant mortality rate than white moms who didn’t finish high
  school
• The infant mortality rate for
  African American mothers with over 13 years of education was almost three
  times that of non-Hispanic white mothers.
• Black women who get prenatal care in the first trimester
  have double the infant mortality rate of white mothers with
  first-trimester care
• Only 17 percent of all U.S. births
  were to African-American families, but 33 percent of all low-birthweight
  babies were African-American, according to one report.
• Black women with similar levels of prenatal care as
  Hispanic women (generally less educated and with lower incomes than
  blacks) have higher rates of low birth weight, preterm deliveries, and
  infant mortality.
• According to Dr. Michael Lu, assistant professor of
  obstetrics and gynecology and public health at UCLA, researchers have
  found that even when they control for such varied factors as poverty,
  housing, employment, medical risk, abuse, social support and so on, 90
  percent of the differences in birth weight between black and white moms
  remains unaccounted for. "Most studies have looked at black-white
  differences during pregnancy, for example, differences in prenatal care
  utilization or maternal behavior," he says. "What we’re finding
  is that these differences really explain very little of the disparities in
  birth outcomes."