The National Institutes of Health says that a community’s infant mortality rate “is an important factor in understanding a population’s overall health because many factors that contribute to infant deaths also affect the health of everyone in a population.”
By that measure, Bartholomew County and Indiana have work to do, because our local and state infant mortality rates in recent years have been worse than the national average.
For the years 2017 to 2021, the local and state infant mortality rate was 6.8 deaths per 1,000 live births, The Republic’s Andy East reported in an article published Sunday. The overall US rate was about 5.5 over the same period, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But there are high hopes for improvement. In 2022, there was only one infant death in the county. By comparison, for the years 2017 to 2022, there was an average of seven infant deaths each year.
We don’t know exactly why that number was much lower last year, but we do know that more concerted efforts have been brought to bear locally to ensure that babies are born healthy and thriving.
“There are a whole host of reasons why a baby might pass away before their first birthday,” said Peggy Pigman, infant mortality prevention coordinator at Healthy Communities. “A lot of them … aren’t preventable, or the things that need to be done to prevent them are a lot bigger than something that we could just kind of pull a lever on here.”
But where intervention can make a difference, Pigman and Healthy Communities are doing so. These efforts include helping address substance abuse disorder among pregnant women and promoting safe sleep habits including preventing deaths that can occur from co-sleeping, which increases the risk of sudden infant death syndrome.
Also, Bartholomew County in 2018 established the first formal fetal-infant mortality review.
And soon, local health officials will begin training in a partnership with Healthy Birth Day Inc. to bring a new app called Count the Kicks to Indiana and to Bartholomew County. It is designed to reduce stillbirths.
“The app includes an algorithm that reminds patients to track fetal movement during late second trimester and third trimester, which can help alert them to red flags in their pregnancies,” East reported, noting health officials believe 1 in 4 miscarriages may be preventable with such early detection.
An ambitious goal that Healthy Communities is working toward is meeting the CDC’s goal of an infant mortality rate of 5 per 1,000 births by the year 2030. Just a few years ago, the county’s infant mortality rate was more than twice that high.
The efforts of Pigman and those working to reduce infant mortality in our community is laudable. And in that regard, Pigman recently was bestowed the inaugural Donald W. & Catherine G. Jurgemeyer Community Hero Award, which recognizes and celebrates the contributions of everyday local heroes — those who have performed life-saving measures, come to the aid of another or contributed to the safety, security and resiliency of our community.
The effort to reduce infant mortality does all those things and fundamentally improves our community. We salute Pigman and those working hard on this crucial cause.
