Maternity Care Coalition (MCC) was founded Black babies were dying at a rate two times higher in Philadelphia compared to their white counterparts. On September 1st, MCC brought messaging back to its roots by launching an online campaign alongside our Healthy Start team for Infant Mortality Awareness Month. This month-long campaign focused on infant mortality awareness and safe sleep practices that help reduce the risk of infant sleep-related deaths. The campaign kicked off with a series of social media posts on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and concluded with information sessions held by MCC’s MOMobile Healthy Start program.
MCC’s Healthy Start program supports pregnant women and families with children under the age of two with a wide range of health and social services to reduce infant mortality and poor birth outcomes. On September 24th and 28th, the Healthy Start program held four virtual information sessions for MCC employees and virtual parenting groups. These sessions covered infant mortality statistics, what exactly infant mortality is, and preventative ways to reduce the risk of infant mortality.
“The Healthy Start program is helping me with so many different resources. The staff at MCC are very supportive and very caring. They also give me motivation to do better for me and my kids,” MCC client.
Although the campaign has ended, MCC will continue to spread awareness in an effort to reduce infant mortality.
The Safe Sleep Awareness For Every Well Newborn PASafeSleep program involves the joint efforts of hospitals and community partners throughout Pennsylvania to promote proven safe sleep practices for well infants in the hospital, home, and community care settings. With many players in the community working together, PASafeSleep is looking to help decrease cases of Sudden Unexpected Infant Death (SUID) across the state.
As one of the community members of the PASafeSleep program, MCC combined the Infant Mortality Awareness campaign with safe sleep messaging to further educate our community members. Below you will find important tips and practices to keep babies safe.