Detroit Team Shrinks Breastfeeding Disparities

Collaborative efforts targeting adult-peer mentoring in Kansas City, Missouri have resulted in less crime and increased trust among participants. Focusing on high-risk teens and young adults, the program known as Teens in Transition connects law enforcement with youth members to work together on an art project over a 9-week span.

A doula program in San Francisco is helping to create jobs and build equity in maternal health, especially for Black mothers. Training is free for the client as well as for the doulas, with trainees also receiving mentorship and full benefits. To date, the organization has raised nearly $1 million for operational expenses from a variety of channels including "foundations, a city-managed health plan, and revenue from a local sugary drinks tax."

Providing door-to-door health care for mothers and children under five years of age greatly reduces mortality. Thanks to a program of home visits by community health care workers funded by the Clinton Health Access Initiative, the Yirimadio neighborhood of Mali’s capital city, Bamako, has succeeded in dramatically reducing childhood mortality. The government intends to scale the pilot program into a nationwide campaign by 2022.

Richland County, OH has a 7.3 percent infant mortality rate per 1,000 infants born, which is one point higher than the national rate. The rate is influenced by socio-economic issues and a lack of pre-and post-natal care. Different programs and organizations in Richland County confront these factors by expanding access to prenatal health care and expanding services to minority communities for infant care.

In New Haven, the police department launched a program that pairs cops with clinicians. “We see ourselves as psychiatrists with guns and a badge.” They see children as victims too, who can experience trauma when witnessing violence or arrests. So far they’ve helped more than 20,000 families and children.

In 2010, 5.9 million children were reported as abused or neglected in the United States. The Nurse-Family Partnership, or NFP, arranges for registered nurses to make regular home visits to first-time low-income or vulnerable mothers, starting early in their pregnancies and continuing until their child is 2.

Nearly two decades ago, Pontevedra, Spain, made a radical shift away from cars and focused on redesigning the center from the sight line of a child walking on the street. Combined with affordable residences in the urban area, the strategy has revitalized the center, luring young families and creating an atmosphere where parents feel supported and children flourish. CO2 emissions have also dropped as fewer people drive cars and the town has experienced more growth than others in the region.

Chicago suffers from violence and tension between police officers and low-income predominantly Black communities. In 2011, the chief of police consulted with a network of university academics and began implementing “procedural justice,” which was an approach that trained police departments to surmount the lack of confidence that residents felt towards officers. The academics and police chief found that by directing social workers to the homes of at-risk community members, and regarding them with respect, there was a reduction in violence—but now the program has stalled.

New mothers who live in poverty are faced with fewer resources to help them with their physical and mental health as well as the health of their babies. In New York City, the Nurse-Family partnership matches nurses with economically poor first-time mothers. Different studies have shown that women in the program have healthier pregnancies and children.

A shortage of incubators in a Bogota hospital was causing rampant infections among newborns. Kangaroo care, a system where the infant's mother is employed as a human incubator, was created and solved the shortage problem.