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New York City's infant mortality rate declined in 2006
October 04, 2007Poverty, race, and mother's health before pregnancy all affect infant survival
New York City's infant mortality rate - widely regarded as a barometer of a population's general health - fell slightly in 2006, the Health Department reported today. The rate in 2006 was 5.9 infant deaths for every 1,000 births, down from 6.0 the previous year. The City has made major progress in reducing infant deaths since the early 1990s, when the rate was double what it is today, but the decline has leveled off in recent years. The Health Department also reported that in poorer sectors of the city, infant mortality rates are still double the citywide rate.
In 2006, there were 740 infant deaths (defined as deaths of infants less than a year old) out of 125,506 New York City births. The city's infant mortality rate is still lower than the national rate, which was 6.8 per 1,000 births in 2004, the most recent year on record. The leading causes of infant death both in New York City and nationally are birth defects, premature birth, and low birth weight.
"We are making progress, but not enough, and not everywhere," said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, Health Commissioner for New York City. "There is no single solution to high rates of infant death we see in poor neighborhoods. We need targeted efforts to improve the health of women and children, but we also need to reduce poverty and improve women's access to health care, healthy food, smoke-free environments, and opportunities for physical activity before, during, and after pregnancy."
A woman's health before she becomes pregnant is critically important. Infant illness and death is more common in babies whose mothers smoke, use alcohol or drugs, or are obese, have diabetes, or have high blood pressure before they become pregnant. New data from the New York City Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System suggest that all of these risk factors are common among NYC women. Among those who gave birth in 2004 and 2005:
* About 40% were overweight or obese before they became pregnant.
* One in eight women reported smoking during the three months before pregnancy; only half of these women stopped smoking while pregnant. According to a separate survey, 16% of New York City women aged 18 - 44 smoke. Many women may smoke or use alcohol during the first trimester of pregnancy, before they know they are pregnant but during the most critical time for fetal development.
* Nearly 8% reported having high blood pressure before or during pregnancy.
* About one in 40 (2.4%) had diabetes before becoming pregnant, and one in 10 developed diabetes during pregnancy - a condition known as gestational diabetes.
Disparities in Infant Mortality
In 2006, the infant mortality rates for black and Puerto Rican New Yorkers were more than double those for whites and Asians - a pattern that has persisted for more than a decade. The race gap persists even when poverty is taken out of the equation. Infants born to higher-income black women died at nearly three times the rate of those born to higher-income white women. While the reasons are not well understood, some experts believe the stress of experiencing of racial discrimination may affect the health of black women.
Infant mortality also varies greatly from one part of the city to another, with low-income areas suffering the highest rates. The highest rate was in the Bronx (7.1 deaths for every 1,000 births). Brooklyn's rate was on par with the city average, while Queens, Manhattan and Staten Island fared better than the city as a whole. Over the past three years, Brownsville and Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, along with eastern Jamaica in Queens, have had higher infant death rates than any other neighborhood. A complete list of rates by neighborhood is available online at www.nyc.gov/html/doh/downloads/pdf/vs/vs-imr-neighborhood-2007.pdf.
Infants who are multiples (twins, triplets, etc.) die at five times the rate of single infants because they are often born preterm. Multiples accounted for 3.8% of New York City births in 2006, up from 3.0% a decade earlier - reflecting a rise in maternal age and an increase in the use of fertility treatments.
Driving Down the Infant Mortality Rate
While working to improve everyone's access to healthy food and physical activity, the Health Department is also taking direct steps to reduce infant mortality and address its disparate impact:
* Expanding the Nurse-Family Partnership, with the aim of serving more than 2,000 families by July 2008. NFP is a nurse home-visiting program for low-income, first-time mothers. Nurses interact regularly with women from the time they are pregnant through their child's second birthday to help them take the steps needed to keep themselves and their babies healthy.
* Offering a single home visit to all families with new babies in parts of Harlem, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. Through this Newborn Home Visiting Program, Health Department workers assess the safety of the home environment, educate new parents about breastfeeding and safe sleep, and help families access medical care and social services.
* Promoting breastfeeding through the Breastfeeding Initiative. Most recently, the Health Department and the Health and Hospitals Corporation launched a comprehensive breastfeeding-promotion program to encourage breastfeeding and eliminate formula giveaways in public hospitals.
* Providing portable cribs and safe-sleep education through the New York City Safe Sleep Initiative.
* Working with 40 community-based organizations, with funding from the City Council, to reduce infant mortality through health education workshops, outreach, referral services, case management, peer education and other activities.
What Women Can Do To Stay Healthy and Have a Healthy Baby
* Plan your pregnancy. Unplanned pregnancies are more likely to result low birth weight, infant death, and poor development.
* Have a regular doctor or health care provider to help you stay healthy.
* If you smoke or use alcohol or drugs, get help to stop.
* Maintain a healthy weight and eat a healthy diet.
* Keep chronic illnesses like diabetes and high blood pressure under control.
* Get help if you are depressed, overly stressed, or abused.
* Take folic acid, which helps prevent serious birth defects.
* Breastfeed your baby. Breastfeeding lowers the risk of acquiring infectious diseases that put a new baby at risk of death. Breastfeeding also lowers the risk of SIDS.
New York City Health Department
"We are making progress, but not enough, and not everywhere," said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, Health Commissioner for New York City. "There is no single solution to high rates of infant death we see in poor neighborhoods. We need targeted efforts to improve the health of women and children, but we also need to reduce poverty and improve women's access to health care, healthy food, smoke-free environments, and opportunities for physical activity before, during, and after pregnancy."
A woman's health before she becomes pregnant is critically important. Infant illness and death is more common in babies whose mothers smoke, use alcohol or drugs, or are obese, have diabetes, or have high blood pressure before they become pregnant. New data from the New York City Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System suggest that all of these risk factors are common among NYC women. Among those who gave birth in 2004 and 2005:
* About 40% were overweight or obese before they became pregnant.
* One in eight women reported smoking during the three months before pregnancy; only half of these women stopped smoking while pregnant. According to a separate survey, 16% of New York City women aged 18 - 44 smoke. Many women may smoke or use alcohol during the first trimester of pregnancy, before they know they are pregnant but during the most critical time for fetal development.
* Nearly 8% reported having high blood pressure before or during pregnancy.
* About one in 40 (2.4%) had diabetes before becoming pregnant, and one in 10 developed diabetes during pregnancy - a condition known as gestational diabetes.
Disparities in Infant Mortality
In 2006, the infant mortality rates for black and Puerto Rican New Yorkers were more than double those for whites and Asians - a pattern that has persisted for more than a decade. The race gap persists even when poverty is taken out of the equation. Infants born to higher-income black women died at nearly three times the rate of those born to higher-income white women. While the reasons are not well understood, some experts believe the stress of experiencing of racial discrimination may affect the health of black women.
Infant mortality also varies greatly from one part of the city to another, with low-income areas suffering the highest rates. The highest rate was in the Bronx (7.1 deaths for every 1,000 births). Brooklyn's rate was on par with the city average, while Queens, Manhattan and Staten Island fared better than the city as a whole. Over the past three years, Brownsville and Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, along with eastern Jamaica in Queens, have had higher infant death rates than any other neighborhood. A complete list of rates by neighborhood is available online at www.nyc.gov/html/doh/downloads/pdf/vs/vs-imr-neighborhood-2007.pdf.
Infants who are multiples (twins, triplets, etc.) die at five times the rate of single infants because they are often born preterm. Multiples accounted for 3.8% of New York City births in 2006, up from 3.0% a decade earlier - reflecting a rise in maternal age and an increase in the use of fertility treatments.
Driving Down the Infant Mortality Rate
While working to improve everyone's access to healthy food and physical activity, the Health Department is also taking direct steps to reduce infant mortality and address its disparate impact:
* Expanding the Nurse-Family Partnership, with the aim of serving more than 2,000 families by July 2008. NFP is a nurse home-visiting program for low-income, first-time mothers. Nurses interact regularly with women from the time they are pregnant through their child's second birthday to help them take the steps needed to keep themselves and their babies healthy.
* Offering a single home visit to all families with new babies in parts of Harlem, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. Through this Newborn Home Visiting Program, Health Department workers assess the safety of the home environment, educate new parents about breastfeeding and safe sleep, and help families access medical care and social services.
* Promoting breastfeeding through the Breastfeeding Initiative. Most recently, the Health Department and the Health and Hospitals Corporation launched a comprehensive breastfeeding-promotion program to encourage breastfeeding and eliminate formula giveaways in public hospitals.
* Providing portable cribs and safe-sleep education through the New York City Safe Sleep Initiative.
* Working with 40 community-based organizations, with funding from the City Council, to reduce infant mortality through health education workshops, outreach, referral services, case management, peer education and other activities.
What Women Can Do To Stay Healthy and Have a Healthy Baby
* Plan your pregnancy. Unplanned pregnancies are more likely to result low birth weight, infant death, and poor development.
* Have a regular doctor or health care provider to help you stay healthy.
* If you smoke or use alcohol or drugs, get help to stop.
* Maintain a healthy weight and eat a healthy diet.
* Keep chronic illnesses like diabetes and high blood pressure under control.
* Get help if you are depressed, overly stressed, or abused.
* Take folic acid, which helps prevent serious birth defects.
* Breastfeed your baby. Breastfeeding lowers the risk of acquiring infectious diseases that put a new baby at risk of death. Breastfeeding also lowers the risk of SIDS.
New York City Health Department
Infant Mortality Current Events and Infant Mortality News RSSUNC study: Insecticide-treated bed nets reduce infant deaths in Democratic Republic of Congo
Giving insecticide-treated bed nets to nearly 18,000 mothers at prenatal clinics in the Democratic Republic of Congo prevented an estimated 414 infant deaths from malaria, a study by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researchers concludes.
ISU researchers find possible treatment for Spinal Muscular Atrophy
Spinal Muscular Atrophy is the second-leading cause of infant mortality in the world.
Study reveals conflict between doctors, midwives over homebirth
Two Oregon State University researchers have uncovered a pattern of distrust - and sometimes outright antagonism - among physicians at hospitals and midwives who are transporting their home-birth clients to the hospital because of complications.
Maternal smoking may alter the arousal process of infants, increasing their risk for SIDS
A study in the April 1 issue of the journal SLEEP shows that maternal smoking is associated with an impaired infant arousal process that may increase the risk for sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). The authors suggest that maternal smoking has replaced stomach sleeping as the greatest modifiable risk factor for SIDS.
Studies link maternity leave with fewer C-sections and increased breastfeeding
Two new studies led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, suggest that taking maternity leave before and after the birth of a baby is a good investment in terms of health benefits for both mothers and newborns.
Patient-derived induced stem cells retain disease traits
hen neurons started dying in Clive Svendsen's lab dishes, he couldn't have been more pleased. The dying cells - the same type lost in patients with the devastating neurological disease spinal muscular atrophy - confirmed that the University of Wisconsin-Madison stem cell biologist had recreated the hallmarks of a genetic disorder in the lab, using stem cells derived from a patient.
Depression during pregnancy can double risk of preterm delivery
Depressed pregnant women have twice the risk of preterm delivery than pregnant women with no symptoms of depression, according to a new study by the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research.
Post-term pregnancies risk infant's life and health, UCSF studies show
Infants born more than one week past their due dates have a higher risk of both impaired health and death, according to two new studies by authors from the University of California's San Francisco and Berkeley campuses.
Alcohol consumption can cause too much cell death, fetal abnormalities
The initial signs of fetal alcohol syndrome are slight but classic: facial malformations such as a flat and high upper lip, small eye openings and a short nose.
Stroke and SIDS in Alaska topics of neuroscience conference
University of Alaska Fairbanks neuroscientists studying stroke and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome will present their research findings at the 7th Conference of the Specialized Neuroscience Research Programs in New York Aug. 19-22, 2008.
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Infant Mortality: A Continuing Social Problem by Eilidh Garrett (Editor), Chris Galley (Editor), Nicola Shelton (Editor), Robert Woods (Editor) In 1906, Sir George Newman's "Infant Mortality: A Social Problem", one of the most important health studies of the twentieth century, was published. To commemorate this anniversary, this volume brings together an interdisciplinary team of leading academics to evaluate Newman's critical contribution, to review current understandings of the history of infant and early childhood mortality, especially in Britain, and to discuss modern approaches to infant health as a continuing social problem. The volume argues that, even after 100 years of health programmes, scientific advances and medical interventions, early-age mortality is still a significant social problem and it also proposes new ways of defining and tackling the problem of persistent mortality differentials. |
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Historic Print (S): Better housing The solution to infant mortality in the slums / Benj. Sheer. by Library Images This is a museum quality, reproduction print on premium paper with archival/UV resistant inks. The framed work is single matted (ivory), under acrylic glass, with a hanging wire. [New York : Federal Art Project, 1936] Date stamped on verso: Dec 18 1936. Work Projects Administration Poster Collection (Library of Congress). New York City Housing Authority - Fiorello H. La Guardia, Mayor - Langdon W. Post, Comm. 1 print on board (poster) : silkscreen, color. New York City Housing Authority--Public relations--1930-1940. Infants--New York (State)--New York--1930-1940. Death--1930-1940. Slums--New York (State)--New York--1930-1940. City planning--New York (State)--New York--1930-1940. Housing--New York (State)--New York--1930-1940. SOURCE: Library of Congress | |
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ABC News 20/20 Babyland There are places in America where the unthinkable is happening -- too many babies are dying. In most cities, black babies are dying at three times the rate of white babies. That's what's happening in Memphis, Tennessee, the city with the nation's highest rate of infant mortality. A baby dies there on average every 43 hours. But many people are working to change that startling statistic. ABC News travels to Memphis and follows a black teenage mother-to-be who is mentored by a volunteer from a white suburban church in order to ensure that both mother and baby stay healthy. The surprising relationship between these two women, the poor black mother and the white mentor of comfortable means, becomes the emotional center of the documentary. ABC News reports the medical story of infant... |
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Birth, Poverty And Wealth - A Study Of Infant Mortality by Richard M. Titmuss (Author) Text extracted from opening pages of book: BIRTH, POVERTY AND WEALTH A STUDY OF INFANT MORTALITY by RICHARD M. TITMUSS Lords and Commons of England, dbnsider what nation it is whereof ye are and whereof ye are the governors , . . . MILTON 1943 HAMISH HAMILTON MEDICAL BOOKS 90 GREAT RUSSELL STREET LONDON, W. C. I FOREWORD The new-born child feels the impact of all the forces in his environment. His chances of survival and healthy Development depend of course on his congenital equip ment, but only in part ; to a very large measure they turn on such external influences as the wealth of his parents and their capacity to take advantage of the medical knowledge and social services available for his welfare. The sum total of all these factors of inborn susceptibilities and resistances and... |
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Save the Babies: American Public Health Reform and the Prevention of Infant Mortality, 1850-1929 (Ann Arbor Paperbacks) by Richard A. Meckel (Author) Today fewer than one in a hundred American babies die in infancy. But a century ago, as many as one in six did. Historian Richard Meckel analyzes the efforts of American reformers who mounted a campaign to reduce infant mortality, from its "discovery" as a social problem in the 1850s to the limited success in securing federal funding for infancy and maternity programs in the 1920s. In a substantive epilogue, he also traces the evolution of American infant welfare policy from the 1930s to 1990. Meckel depicts a reform movement that had a single overriding goal but was made up of professional groups with often competing ideas and agendas. He shows how interaction between these groups, as well as changing social and medical theories, propelled the movement through three overlapping... | |
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Infant and Child Mortality in the Past (International Studies in Demography) by Alain Bideau (Editor), Bertrand Desjardins (Editor), Brignoli (Editor) This volume examines the trends of early-age mortality across time and space and the methodological and theoretical problems inherent in such studies. The approach is interdisciplinary, with contributions from demography, biology, medicine, and economic and social history. The geographical range encompasses Europe, North America, Japan, and India. |
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Historic Print (M): Better housing The solution to infant mortality in the slums / Benj. Sheer. by Library Images This is a museum quality, reproduction print on premium paper with archival/UV resistant inks. [New York : Federal Art Project, 1936] Date stamped on verso: Dec 18 1936. Work Projects Administration Poster Collection (Library of Congress). New York City Housing Authority - Fiorello H. La Guardia, Mayor - Langdon W. Post, Comm. 1 print on board (poster) : silkscreen, color. New York City Housing Authority--Public relations--1930-1940. Infants--New York (State)--New York--1930-1940. Death--1930-1940. Slums--New York (State)--New York--1930-1940. City planning--New York (State)--New York--1930-1940. Housing--New York (State)--New York--1930-1940. SOURCE: Library of Congress | |
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