Infant Mortality Among African Americans: A Detailed Program Plan

This project presents a comprehensive program plan aimed at reducing infant mortality rates within the African American population. The plan focuses on several key areas, including promoting health awareness through nutritional education and folic acid supplementation to prevent birth defects, providing pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions like steroid and oxygen therapy to address breathing disturbances in infants, and enhancing prenatal and preconception care by addressing factors like substance abuse through psychological counseling. The program also emphasizes post-natal care, particularly creating safe infant sleep environments to prevent sudden unexpected infant death. Furthermore, it addresses socioeconomic factors and maternal education through counseling and empowerment, aiming to foster behavioral and cultural changes within the community. The program's success relies on the collaboration of various resources, including facilitators, social workers, doctors, nurses, and community health workers, all working within a community-centered and culturally sensitive framework to achieve a strategic practice change.

RUNNING HEAD: INFANT MORTALITY AMONG THE AFRICAN AMERICAN
POPULATION
INFANT MORTALITY AMONG THE AFRICAN AMERICAN POPULATION
Name of Student
Name of University
Author note

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PLANNING THE PROGRAM
Uncertain and unexpected mortality of the young members in a society is a devious
issue that upsets the rhythm of a society and harmony of a community. In African American
population – the mortality rate of infants has been increasing and this has posed an
undeniable threat to the survival of these communities. These incidents takes the entire
sociocultural framework of the community and country, the community resides in – into a
moral dilemma of how have the scientific and sociological advancements been competent so
far to prevent these unfortunate events.
The infant mortality prevention program will address the different key problems
associated with infant mortality among the African American population. Firstly, the
proposed program will focus on promoting a health awareness in the concerned population.
Majority of the infant deaths in United States and in African American population – occurs
due to birth defects such as neural tube defects (Williams et al., 2015). Other cause preterm
birth (premature delivery), low birth weight are great barriers to infantile survival rate. The
proposed health program will focus on dietary changes, assessing and promoting nutritional
status amongst women of the population with a special emphasis on folic acid
supplementation (which can prevent development of neural tube defects). A nutritional
assessment and screening tool (Field & Hand, 2015) will be used for this purpose. Secondly,
the major complications are imposed by the outcomes of the aforementioned etiologies.
When the primary problems leads to secondary problems like underdeveloped lungs leading
to breathing disturbances in the infants which can be categorized as the secondary causes of
mortality – has to be addressed as well. The proposed mortality prevention program will
address these breathing and related dysfunctions by delivering a pharmacological intervention
(steroid therapy), oxygen therapy (Franklin et al., 2018) and ventilation support to the
affected infants. An effective team of clinicians including pulmonologists, respiratory

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therapists, cardiopulmonary therapists, informed care and pediatric specialist nurses will be
responsible for delivering the pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions to the
African American population, under the program’s guidelines. Thirdly, an infant mortality
prevention strategy will be used to enhance prenatal care and preconception. Again, in this
part, the program will create awareness about the healthy diet, healthy weight and about
management of associated chronic situations. Alcohol and other drugs abuse (Scott-Goodwin,
Puerto & Moreno, 2016) of the parents is associated with infant mortality and the program
will provision for a ‘psychological counselling’ to minimize these risk factors. The program
will focus on creating an awareness about pre natal care to improve maternal health status of
pregnant American African women.
The program will empower the African American population with knowledge about
post-natal care as it has been reported that Sudden expected infant death (Taniguchi et al.,
2016) in sleep is the third cardinal cause of infant mortality in this population and United
States as a whole. Hence, the program will provide the African American women with
knowledge of creating a safe infant sleep environment. Putting the baby’s back on bed and
keeping the infant’s sleeping area free from crib bumpers, toys and loose bedding is critical to
decrease the risk factors. The program will incorporate antenatal anxiety assessments scale,
postnatal depression assessment scale in order to better the conditions surrounding child-care
and decreasing mortality rates. The socioeconomic status along with maternal education
(Betancourt et al., 2016) will be strengthened through proper counselling, education and
empowerment of the African American women – under ‘process change’ principle of the
study. The responsiveness and adherence to program guidelines by the African American
women will be checked under ‘behavioral change’ objective of the infant death prevention
health program. The performances of the health workers and community workers will be
audited regularly so as to enhance the quality of health awareness program. The proposed

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program plans to bring the American African women under a coverage of health insurance
and make health, nursing, post and prenatal, midwifery education and service accessible to
the population. Last but not the least, the program will focus to bring about a ‘cultural
change’ about health and self-care practices among the American African women to
minimize and finally eliminate incidents of infant death. The facilitators, social workers,
doctors, nurses and the community health workers are the major resources whose
contribution is valuable to the program’s success.
The program will be based on a community centered communication and culturally
safe practice that will enhance collaborative behaviors of the doctors, community health
nurses, rehabilitation specialists, social workers and traditional practitioners of the African
American community so that an effective, strategic practice change can be bought about to
prevent infant mortality. The program’s facilitators will regulate the ethical and legal
implications in order to deliver an efficient, client centered practice. The ethical implications
will be handled carefully by the campaign workers towards the benefit of the community and
child care.
Activities Wk
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Initial meeting
Nutritional screening
Nutritional awareness
program
Progress update meeting
Child and infant care
program

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Maternal health awareness
program ( on antenatal
and postnatal care)
Closure meeting

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References
Betancourt, L. M., Avants, B., Farah, M. J., Brodsky, N. L., Wu, J., Ashtari, M., & Hurt, H.
(2016). Effect of socioeconomic status (SES) disparity on neural development in
female African‐American infants at age 1 month. Developmental Science, 19(6), 947-
956.
Field, L. B., & Hand, R. K. (2015). Differentiating malnutrition screening and assessment: a
nutrition care process perspective. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and
Dietetics, 115(5), 824-828.
Franklin, D., Babl, F. E., Schlapbach, L. J., Oakley, E., Craig, S., Neutze, J., ... & Dalziel, S.
R. (2018). A randomized trial of high-flow oxygen therapy in infants with
bronchiolitis. New England Journal of Medicine, 378(12), 1121-1131.
Scott-Goodwin, A. C., Puerto, M., & Moreno, I. (2016). Toxic effects of prenatal exposure to
alcohol, tobacco and other drugs. Reproductive Toxicology, 61, 120-130.
Taniguchi, K., Nakayama, M., Nakahira, K., Nakura, Y., Kanagawa, N., Yanagihara, I., &
Miyaishi, S. (2016). Sudden infant death due to Lactococcal infective
endocarditis. Legal Medicine, 19, 107-111.
Williams, J., Mai, C. T., Mulinare, J., Isenburg, J., Flood, T. J., Ethen, M., ... & Kirby, R. S.
(2015). Updated estimates of neural tube defects prevented by mandatory folic acid
fortification—United States, 1995–2011. MMWR. Morbidity and mortality weekly
report, 64(1), 1.

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