JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The Jacksonville City Council is expected to vote Tuesday on an initiative that aims to improve local rates of infant mortality.
The mortality rates are higher in Duval County than they are in the rest of the state and the nation.
If approved, this initiative would provide $250,000 to save lives and help local families thrive.
As Jacksonville’s Chief Health Officer, one of the issues Dr. Sunil Joshi is tackling is infant and maternal mortality.
“If you think about it, overall, here in Duval County, we have about a 6.4 for every 1,000 live births associated with mortality by the time they’re one year of age,” Joshi said.
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There’s a huge gap by race.
According to data from the Northeast Florida Healthy Start Coalition, local babies who are Black are nearly three and a half times more likely to die before their first birthday than babies who are white.
According to the Florida Department of Health, 12 out of 1,000 Black babies born in Duval County last year died before turning one.
“Some of that goes back to socio-economic issues, and education, and the importance of getting prenatal care, too,” Joshi said.
Joshi said a lot of these deaths are preventable.
“So, the very large percentage of them are between 20 and 30% of these deaths are related to preventable causes, including sleep-related issues,” Joshi said.
Issues like bed-sharing, having items in the bed that suffocated the baby, and the baby sleeping in the wrong position.
That’s where community health workers like Roslyn Parker come in.
Parker works at the Northeast Florida Healthy Start Coalition connecting caregivers to resources, including home visits by community health workers to parents identified as being at risk of losing their baby to help relay the importance of things like vaccines, self-care and sleeping positions.
“A lot of us that are in this field have been there, done that, if you will,” Parker said. “We have needed help at some point in time in our lives we can relate to when mom says, ‘I’m hurting.’”
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Dr. Joshi said the item before the city council on Tuesday night would provide $250,000 to hire two to three more community health workers to meet at-risk families and help them navigate the early days of parenthood.
“By touching them with some education following through every couple of months, we might be able to save that baby’s life,” Joshi said.
Joshi also said the infant mortality rate has improved in Northeast Florida by more than 7% since 2018, and a large part of that improvement has come from grassroots education.
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