Memphis Initiative Shows Promise For Infant Mortality Reduction

10/25/2007 -- Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen’s infant mortality reduction initiative can count an effective Memphis program among its early successes. The Centering Pregnancy Program is the state’s first group prenatal care program for high-risk women.

Centering is an evidence-based model pregnancy care program in which women take classes and attend prenatal exams as a group. The first class, comprised of 11 African American women living in a Memphis neighborhood with one of the state’s historically highest infant mortality rates, had a 100 percent participation rate with all of the women attending all of their appointments, resulting in positive birth outcomes for their newborns.

Dr. Veronica Gunn is medical director for the Office of Children’s Care Coordination, which is overseeing the state’s infant mortality reduction initiative.

“This program targets a population with historically poor attendance at pre-natal care with an average of zero to two doctor visits prior to delivery,” said Gunn. “To date, nine of the women in the first class have delivered their babies. Eight of them were full-term and one was near full-term. These numbers are significant, indicating that centering may be one simple yet highly effective way to address Tennessee’s infant mortality problem.”

Among African American women in Shelby County, the pre-maturity rate is 16.1 percent. Among the women in the Centering Pregnancy group, this rate has been reduced to 9 percent. Tennessee ranks 43rd in the country in infant mortality, with more babies dying in Memphis than in any other city in the state and at a rate twice the national average.

Bredesen and Shelby County Mayor AC Wharton kicked off the Infant Mortality Reduction initiative in Memphis last year, launching the statewide program first in Shelby County because the infant mortality problem there is particularly acute.

“Of the babies that die in Tennessee, most die within the first month of life and they die because they are extremely premature and very small,” Bredesen said. “We know that mothers who get the proper prenatal care have a much better chance of delivering full-term babies, and we have every reason to believe our current and future efforts will improve birth outcomes for Tennessee’s children.”

“I am grateful to Governor Bredesen for taking the lead on this vital issue of decreasing infant death and ensuring that we have healthy babies in Tennessee,” said Wharton. “This is exactly the type of outcome we hoped to achieve when the Governor and I, along with 250 concerned Memphians, set goals for improvement at the Infant Morality Summit last April. It is encouraging to see this kind of progress.”

There are four Centering Pregnancy classes currently up and running in Memphis. Another program has been funded for Nashville’s Vine Hill Clinic area and will begin later this year.

Other infant mortality reduction efforts underway in Tennessee include smoking cessation interventions in East Tennessee, a home visitor program in Memphis and expansion of pre-natal care services at Erlanger Hospital in Chattanooga, which serves a high risk population.

Infant mortality refers to the death of a live-born infant at any point before the first year of life. To improve Tennessee’s birth outcomes, the Governor’s Office of Children’s Care Coordination and the Governor’s Children’s Cabinet continue to leverage partnerships with state and local government, national experts and community groups who share Bredesen’s vision of seeing babies reach their first birthdays. The state Department of Health also operates a statewide campaign, “1 For All,” to support this effort.

Source: Tennessee Governor

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