ABCs for Healthy Families: A Social-Marketing Program Promoting the Life Course Perspective to Address Health Disparities in Birth Outcomes

Significant health inequity in infant mortality rates (IMR) continue to exist between African-Americans (AAs) and Whites. During 2006-2008 in Wisconsin, the White IMR was 5.4 per 1,000 live births, while the AA rate was 15.2. The life-course perspective supports the hypothesis that pre/interconceptional periods are important times to intervene to reduce risk factors and promote facilitators to healthy births, e.g., increased social support. The HRSA-funded ABCs for Healthy Families (ABCs) program was designed to operationalize the life-course perspective. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected to guide the development of a social-marketing campaign to promote knowledge of the life-course perspective as it pertains to adverse birth outcomes, improve conditions that support healthy birth outcomes, and reduce disparities in birth outcomes among AAs in southeastern Wisconsin. In addition to the social-marketing campaign emphasizing stress reduction as a way to address adverse birth outcomes, ABCs program components include training community interviewers to conduct surveys, as well as conducting multiple rounds of 8-session support circles for pregnant and parenting women and their partners. A technical advisory group and community advisory board guided the content and methods used for the campaign. Program participation include 25 community interviewers, 4 support circle facilitators, 38 support circle participants, and 750 survey respondents. The ABCs program development, preliminary outcomes, and highlights from the surveys that focus on social media, stress, racism, and life-course will be discussed, as well as implications of lessons learned from the design and administration of our intercept-interview surveys, social-marketing campaign materials, and support circle curriculum.