213049 Overview of Healthy Babies are Worth the Wait - Part I

Tuesday, November 10, 2009: 8:37 AM

Karla Damus, PhD , Office of the Medical Director, March of Dimes, White Plains, NY
Joy Marini, MSPA-C , Johnson & Johnson Pediatric Institute, New Brunswick, NJ
  
Healthy Babies are Worth the Wait® (HBWW), a 3-year, ecological design initiative to prevent preterm birth (PTB), is a partnership among March of Dimes, Johnson & Johnson Pediatric Institute, and the Kentucky Department for Public Health. Designed to reduce rates of singleton PTB by 15% in three KY intervention sites, HBWW works with perinatal providers, public health workers, and community partners to provide information and bundled, evidence-based care to promote healthy, term pregnancies. Despite a slight decrease of the US PTB rate in 2007 to 12.7%, it remains 67% higher than the 7.6% HP2010 objective, there are >540,000 PTBs annually, and PTB is the leading cause of neonatal/infant mortality. HBWW targets late PTB (34-36 weeks), ~ ¾ of all PTBs and responsible for most of the PTB increases in the US/KY.

Learning Objectives:
Describe the 3 partners, the program design, the goal, for Healthy Babies are Worth the Wait (HBWW). Discuss the public health and clinical interventions for HBWW

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am the Program Director, co-PI and the designer of the Healthy Baibies are Worth the Wait program which is the basis for all the talks in this session. I am a perinatal epidemiologist and nurse, on the faculty at the Albert Einstein College of medicine and have worked on preterm prevention research and programs for 3 decades. I am a well known national speaker on perinatal health issues having given more than 400 grand rounds, key note presentations and talks in 43 states in the past 5 years.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

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