Reducing Racial Disparities

In 2020, Black babies made up 38 percent of births in Cuyahoga County and 73 percent of infant deaths.

Reducing these racial inequities is a primary focus of our work at First Year Cleveland (FYC). We are supporting interventions that look at the role structural and institutional racism plays in maternal health and infant deaths, as well as expanding the CenteringPregnancy® model; increasing home visiting, perinatal and birth doula services, fatherhood and faith-based services; exploring the parents’ environment, access to safe and affordable housing and transportation, nutritional deficiencies and long-term stress associated with being a person of color living in a society that still bears evidence of more than 400 years of prejudice and inequities.

Our goal is to execute solutions to reduce all infant deaths and have no racial inequities in infant deaths by the end of 2025. 

(The infant mortality rate (IMR) is the number of deaths per 1,000 live births of babies under one year of age. This rate is often used as an indicator to measure the health and well-being of a community, because factors affecting the health of a population can also impact the mortality rate of infants. The infant mortality inequity ratio is the ratio of the Black infant mortality rate compared to the white infant mortality rate. For example, a value of 4.0 means that Black babies are dying at four times the rate of white babies.) 

Coordinated Partner Efforts

Reducing racial disparities requires coordinated efforts from First Year Cleveland and its 500+ community partners. Our ongoing work and data collected from our action teams is being used to:

• Advance public policy on national, state and local levels
  
  
• Secure funding for our FYC partners
  
  
• Ensure FYC partners use shared measurement practices
  
  
• Allocate Ohio Department of Medicaid resources for home visiting, CenteringPregnancy® and other community efforts
  
  
• Develop institutional policies to address structural racism
  
  
• Identify funding research efforts to better understand the effects of racism on infant deaths
  
  
• Establish a numerical goal for reducing the number of Black babies dying in Cuyahoga County before their first birthday
  
  
• Align access in housing systems and health care systems

Supportive Programs for Families

We are also working to create awareness of the issues surrounding infant deaths in Cuyahoga County and provide important support to families through education and training. We do this through a variety of efforts including:

• Building public will. It is important that the public understands the problem, why change is needed and our proposed solutions.
• Conducting a public awareness campaign surrounding infant mortality and related racial disparities.
• In addition to addressing racism by leading bias testing and training for all systems that interact with expectant parents, we offer stress-related interventions to Black pregnant mothers and fathers, in both individual and group settings through the work of our FYC Action Teams 2 and 3.
• Working with fathers to educate them on their role in reducing infant deaths.
• Training residents and community leaders to engage and educate other community members.

Ways to help reduce racial disparities