Building community-campus partnerships to prevent infant mortality: Lessons learned from building capacity in four U.S. cities

Despite progress, infant mortality rates (IMR) continue to be a significant public health problem in the United States. The U.S. ranks 41st among 191 countries in infant mortality rates (WHO, 2011). IMR among non-Hispanic black infants is 2.4 times that for non-Hispanic white infants (US DHHS, 2011). Since IMR is an important indicator of progress toward health equity, the US DHHS Office of Minority Health (OMH) has been developing and implementing a Preconception Peer Educators (PPE) Program. As for other components of the OMH national program A Healthy Baby Begins with You, the PPE Program aims to raise awareness about the disproportionately high infant mortality rates among African-Americans, and to promote preconception health behaviors among women of childbearing age and sexually active men as a key measure to help reduce the risk for infant mortality. To date, the program has trained more than 800 PPEs from colleges and universities across the United States. This presentation focuses on lessons learned from a partnership development and capacity building pilot program implemented in 4 U.S. Cities - Los Angeles, Nashville, Jacksonville, and Charlotte – to encourage campus-community partnerships, and ultimately, to support PPEs community outreach efforts; and to continue to involve local leaders and organizations in infant mortality prevention programming.