The City-County Council established the Marion County Task Force on Infant Mortality in 1988 after data indicated that Indianapolis led the nation in African American infant mortality in 1984, 1986, and 1987. In 1989, Mayor and the established the Indianapolis Campaign for Healthy Babies as a public-private partnership to implement the recommendations of the task force aimed at lowering the city’s infant mortality rate.
The campaign developed an infrastructure for indigent, perinatal health care by working on removing financial barriers to prenatal and pediatric care; increasing the availability of prenatal and pediatric care for low-income women; providing comprehensive, coordinated health care and social support to women and children; and expanding awareness of the importance of prenatal care, preventive health care, and healthy lifestyles.
To coordinate patient care, Healthy Babies installed a computerized medical record system, which links all neighborhood health centers and hospitals, the Department of Families and Children, and the Marion County Health Department. The campaign raised more than $6.5 million in public and private resources. By the end of 1992, most of its major initiatives had institutional homes and prospects for continued funding.
The (HHC) assumed leadership of “Healthy Babies” in 1993 with the “Indianapolis Healthy Babies Consortium,” a community-based collaborative of service providers and key stakeholders concerned about infant mortality. In 1997, the Marion County Public Health Department received the initial grant award from the Health & Human Services Administration (HRSA) to pilot a demonstration project to reduce adolescent pregnancy.
In 2001, the project expanded to address perinatal health disparities more broadly by creating a “catchment” area of seven zip codes, the highest risk areas in Marion County for infant mortality and poor health outcomes. Also in 2001, a partnership began with Indiana Women’s Prison to provide services to incarcerated pregnant and post-partum women. Collaborations expanded among hospital systems to promote safe sleep education and breastfeeding. Indiana Access and a community workgroup collaborated in 2005 to expand health campaigns.
Indianapolis Healthy Start received a bi-lingual/bi-cultural grant in 2007 to hire the first Spanish-speaking staff member to liaise with the Hispanic community. Indianapolis Healthy Start thus became a centralized resource in the community for pregnant women by offering safe sleep classes and parenting classes. In 2014, Indianapolis Healthy Start expanded the catchment area to better address the areas within Marion County with rising rates of infant mortality. The March of Dimes and the Indiana State Department of Health launched an online referral website called MCH Moms Helpline in 2016.
In 2018 the Fairbanks School of Public Health funded the Grassroots Maternal & Child Health Project, an innovative project to train and empower women from zip codes with high rates of infant mortality to solve the persistent and chronic issue of infant mortality. The Grassroots program empowers women who experience perinatal health disparities. As a result of the city-wide commitment to prevent infant deaths, mortality rates for Black babies in Marion County reached a record low in 2019—10.9 deaths per 1,000 births in comparison to 14.0 in 2018. Overall the infant mortality rate dropped from 9.2 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2018 to 8.8 deaths in 2019.
To continue this trend, the Healthy Baby Consortium established an Optimal Women’s Health committee in 2019 which identified the need for a free prenatal health clinic. Dr. Mary Abernathy began this clinic in 2020 at the Neighborhood Fellowship Church to ensure any pregnant women in Marion County have access to quality prenatal care regardless of their ability to pay. An Indiana Maternal Health Caucus launched in 2020 to better address the health disparities leading to the rise of maternal death across the state.
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