Your Baby's Future Is In Your Hands
Celebrating a baby's birth should be a joyous occasion for a family. Unfortunately, the celebration ends too soon when a baby doesn't live to see its first birthday. While the health of infants in many countries is improving, babies born in the United States now face an ever increasing possibility of not surviving their first year of life.
For African-Americans the infant morality rate is 13 deaths per 1,000 births, more than double the rate of the general population. That's more than 7,500 infant deaths per year.
The Office of Minority Health, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services, has teamed up with Tonya Lewis Lee, producer, writer, and wife of filmmaker Spike Lee to educate and eliminate this disparity among racial and ethnic groups by launching a new educational campaign to raise awareness about the disproportionately high infant mortality rates that exists among the African-American community.
The "A Healthy Baby Begins With You" campaign is intended to attract attention to a problem has existed for years. The goal is to combat the issue by educating families about ways to reduce the risk of infant mortality.
One of the best things families can do to stack the odds in their favor is to educate themselves. "Is It Healthy?", is the question to begin asking. There are some pretty basic, easy to understand concepts to grasp. Unfortunately, they're no longer a part of our national conversation.
For example, to study the effects of potassium on blood pressure, researchers at Duke University ran double-blind studies using potassium supplements. Participants receiving the supplements experienced a significant reduction in blood pressure.
African-Americans showed the biggest drop. Their blood pressure went down almost 20 points, causing the speculation that this particular sub-group might be particularly sensitive to the blood pressure lowering effects of potassium.
Who knew? The good news is that playing the "Is It Healthy?" Game, pays dividends. Healthy behaviors start showing up in our families. Pretty soon, "being healthy" becomes as automatic as brushing our teeth – we all do it, but don't usually think about it.
