Summit to release plan for fighting high Hamilton County infant morality rates

A two-day summit of Hamilton County health and child welfare leaders, sponsored by the Child Policy Research Center at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, will wrap up today by releasing a plan to combat that country's high infant mortality rate. (Source: "Healthy babies, healthy region" Cincinnati Enquirer, Oct. 16, 2007.) Currently, babies in Hamilton County have a mortality rate "1.5 times higher than the rest of the state." Overall, babies in Hamilton County are "twice as likely to die before their first birthday as babies in the rest of the nation." (Source: "County fights infant mortality" Cincinnati Enquirer, Oct. 7, 2007.)

A number of factors are given for this high death rate, including a "growing number of female smokers, a high rate of obesity, a spike in sexually transmitted diseases, a higher incidence of disease in African-American women (who have far higher rates of premature births and infant deaths) and an estimated 15 percent of women who have no health care coverage. A Cincinnati Health Department study, for example, showed that 43 percent of the mothers it served had no health care visits for three years before their pregnancy."