Teryn McDermott
Fairbanks School of Public Health
PBHL-S415 Final Paper & Presentation
Decreasing Infant Mortality & Increasing Maternal Health
PBHL-S415, Applied Health Promotion Methods, was a course I took during the spring of my junior year of undergraduate education. I wanted to showcase this assignment in particular because of the amount of time and effort spent on it. I worked extremely hard throughout the semester on this project with my partner. Due to privacy reasons, my partner's name has been redacted on this assignment. However, I want to be sure to let it be known that my partner and I evenly distributed the work, but truly worked together on all aspects of this project as a team to ensure a cohesive end result.
Indiana faces many issues in terms of an overall healthy population. In particular, Indiana has extremely poor rates of infant and maternal mortality when compared to other states within the nation. Indiana is ranked 41st out of 50 in infant mortality rates in national rankings, with 1 being the lowest number of cases and 50 being the highest number of cases (CDC, 2023). What makes this even more worrying, is that there a clear racial disparities at play in these issues. Infant mortality is more likely to occur in African-American or Hispanic populations and communities, due to a variety of factors, including limited access to care and education (Indiana Department of Health, 2023).
Intervention: Rooted in Care, Blooming With Promise for Every Baby.
Rooted in Care is a mobile unit whose overaching goal is to significantly decrease infant and maternal mortality in women of color across Indiana. This is achieved by linking clients to necessary resources and providing care to communities.
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Decreasing Infant Mortality & Increasing Maternal Health Final Paper
"...we also wanted to focus on African Americans living in communities of low socioeconomic status. This intention was to focus on these specific communities because they are disproportionately affected not only because of race but because of possible income limiting factors. Socioeconomic status contributes to infant mortality by creating barriers to care and necessary resources."
Decreasing Infant Mortality & Increasing Maternal Health Final Presentation
"Mission Statement: Our program is established in hopes to reduce infant mortality in African-American individuals residing in areas of low socioeconomic status within Indiana. We aim to do this by increasing maternal and family education as well as access to resources including but not limited to health care, insurance, transportation, and vital healthcare provisions."
What I learned
It was very important to me that this project be showcased. I felt that this project was one that accumulated all of the things I learned throughout undergraduate education. This project challenged my partner and I to not only be thorough in our research, but to be critical thinkers and creative. I think that this is incredibly important because often in public health, we have to be creative in finding solutions and ensuring that all aspects of a problem are being appropriately delt with if not solved entirely.