After having Caleb and creating our community I felt an overwhelming responsibility to become more educated and engaged in preemie related topics.  Locally there was a report released that talked about infant mortality. The report was a sad reminder of the plight of black women in the Pittsburgh area. Reading the report and having multiple conversations lead me to want to learn about the statistics related to premature births.

I started from a national level. As I began to learn about national stats I wanted to learn more on hyperlocal level. I found state and county stats from March of Dimes. According to the 2019 report card shared by March of Dimes as a country the United States’s rate of premature births has increased from 9.63% in 2015 to 10.02% in 2018.

I shared more information fromt the organization about Pennsylvania (PA), in a social media post (see below). PA has a preterm birth rate of 9.5%. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) reports a 9.4% rate in 2017 ranking PA at 32nd in the country.

Let’s take a closer look at Allegheny county where Pittsburgh is located. The Allegheny County Birth Report 2017, released in May, 2019 by Allegheny County Health Department Bureau of Assessment, Statistics & Epidemiology reports a rate of 9.9%. A rate closely confirmed by March of Dimes. According to Figure 15. Five-year estimates of percent preterm births by Allegheny County municipality,
2013-2017  much of the Pittsburgh area ranges from 9.1%-12.5%.

Now that we have some general statistical background we can pivot to discuss the racial disparities related to black premature births. I must say that I’m not a fan of how the word “race” is used. In my eyes there’s only one “race” which is human. There are however a multitude of ethnicities & nationalities.

From the years 2015 to 2017 , according to the March of Dimes PA Report Card, in Allegheny County, Black mothers gave birth to more premature babies than any other race (14.3%). There are a multitude of contributing factors that connect to the statistic but what does that say about us? March of Dimes (2020) also states that “prematurity/low birthweight is the second leading cause of all infant deaths (during the first year of life) and the leading cause of infant death among black infants.”

The advocate in me was revealed when I had to speak up for Caleb during his NICU days. The question I pose to myself now is what’s next? I have all these numbers, reports, opinions and  conversations in my head. What can Jamie do about this?  I have a lot of research to do on organizations as I want to make sure that I and BYUSisters is properly aligned. I leave this post abruptly because of the struggle I’ve had with writing it. I shared before that Heart Pages is a place of honesty and transparency. Processing this truth hurts! 

If you know or are a part of an organization that supports preemie advocacy please contact us at byusisters@gmail.com. Let’s continue the conversation and supporting one another in the comment section below. 

♥ Jamie C.