As one of its Capacity Building programs, the Women’s Fund is participating in the Milwaukee Life Course Initiative for Healthy Families (LIHF) project’s action planning process. Thanks to a donation to the Women’s Fund from Clear Channel, there are now (as of December 2011) 10 billboards, like the one on the left, on bus shelters across the city. The billboards are intended to support the work of the Life Course project. It states “We can strengthen father involvement, reduce poverty and expand health care access to reduce infant mortality.”
The Life Course project is dedicated to improving the conditions that support healthy birth outcomes for African American women. The goals of this project include improving access to maternal and child health resources, strengthening African American families, and creating an action plan specific to Milwaukee.
Infant mortality statistics for African Americans in the city of Milwaukee are heartbreaking. The black-infant mortality gap is among the highest in the nation. And, the black infant mortality rate in Milwaukee is worse than the rate in Jamaica, Ukraine, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Malaysia and 56 other countries.
An African American woman in Milwaukee is three times more likely to lose her baby in its first year than her white counterpart. Complications from premature births are responsible for more than half of all these infant deaths. In Wisconsin, prematurity cost BadgerCare Plus, the state health plan for families and pregnant women with limited incomes, $81 million in the 2010 fiscal year and more than $300 million over the past four years. Just think what could be done if we had similar funds to spend on preventing infant mortality.
The Milwaukee Lifecourse Initiative for Healthy Families was awarded a grant of $250,000 from the Oversight and Advisory Committee of the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, part of a $10 million overall commitment to address infant mortality among African Americans in Wisconsin. The group, including more than 60 local organizations, will take part in an action planning process facilitated by the Women’s Fund and the Planning Council for Health and Human Services.