Infant
Mortality

The infant mortality rate in Cuyahoga County is one of the highest in the United States. Of the 13,204 babies born in Cuyahoga County in 2020, 101 didn’t make it to their first birthday. The numbers are especially concerning for Black babies. 

The Issue.

For more than five decades, Cuyahoga County has had one of the highest infant death rates in the country. In 2015, the county was the second-worst of 88 counties in Ohio. Of the 14,843 babies born in Cuyahoga County in 2015, 156 babies died before their first birthday, a 28 percent increase from 122 in 2014. The county infant mortality rate was 10.5, a 30 percent increase from 8.1 in 2014, and nearly three times the national average.

Infant mortality is defined as the number of deaths in children under age one and is a key indicator of the overall health of a region. Simply stated, the higher the rates of infant mortality, the less healthy a population is overall. The infant mortality rate is the number of infant deaths per 1,000 live births.

Inequities between white and Black populations are also dramatic and require a sense of urgency, as Black babies die at much higher rates than white infants. In Cuyahoga County in 2018, for instance, the infant mortality rate (IMR) for Black babies was 15.49, while the IMR for white babies was 3.76. Black infant deaths in the City of Cleveland were even more alarming, with an IMR of 17.51, compared to a white IMR of 3.03. In other words, for every white baby that died before their first birthday, nearly six Black babies died. In addition, Black women at every socioeconomic level have higher rates of infant death than white women who have not completed high school. 

The Response.

Recognizing that a new approach was needed to successfully reduce infant deaths in our community, grieving parents and families, frontline caregivers, health care systems, civic and government leaders, faith-based organizations, the City of Cleveland, and Cuyahoga County officials joined together with foundations, hospitals, community-based health care providers and nonprofit leaders to launch First Year Cleveland (FYC) in late December 2015 to bring community members together to achieve social change.

During the first five years of operation, 2016-2020, FYC has worked to reverse the fifty-year trend by activating system-wide interventions, addressing structural racism and coordinating, aligning and expanding evidence-based services. 

Our role at First Year Cleveland

Our mission at First Year Cleveland (FYC) is to mobilize the community through partnerships and a unified strategy to reduce infant deaths and racial inequities. 

To accomplish this, we have activated FYC Action Teams as part of our mobilization strategy. These community teams are bringing partners, parents and providers together to execute long-term solutions to address our priority areas and meet or exceed our goals:

Reduce racial inequities: Reduce Cuyahoga County's baseline (2017) Black to white infant death inequity ratio of 6.71 by 50 percent by the end of 2020 and to zero by 2025. 

Address extreme prematurity: Reduce Cuyahoga County's preterm birth rate from 12.1 percent in 2015 to less than 10 percent by the end of 2020. 

Eliminate sleep-related deaths: Reduce preventable sleep-related infant deaths from 27 in 2015 to less than six by the end of 2020. 

First Year Cleveland is educating and mobilizing the community to act in order to effectively provide needed services and create a better understanding of how structural racism is affecting pregnant women and their babies. FYC and our Action Teams need you to ACT NOW to ensure that every baby celebrates their first birthday. Please take a moment to learn how you can get involved.

*Please note: throughout this website, 2020 and 2021 data are preliminary and unaudited.