COLUMBUS – An optimist would find hope in new numbers that show fewer Ohio babies are dying before they see their first birthday, said Dr. Arthur James, a national expert on infant mortality and an ob-gyn with Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center.
Just-released state data for 2013 show a small dip in infant deaths compared with the year before, and two consecutive years in which the rate has dropped.
It includes an all-time-low black infant-mortality rate and a rate for white babies that hits the national target for 2020.
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But it also reveals a persistent and vast disparity between the races and evidence that sleep-related deaths have surpassed birth defects to become the second-leading cause of death for babies, after prematurity. Babies who sleep on their backs, by themselves and in a crib free of suffocation hazards — blankets, pillows and toys — are safest.
“I’m trying to be an optimist … we’ve dug such a deep hole for ourselves,” James said, referring to rates of infant death that are much worse than the national average and especially alarming among African-American babies.
“I hope this is suggesting we are reversing all the negative momentum Ohio had established.”
The state’s infant-mortality rate (deaths before a first birthday, per 1,000 live births) dropped from 7.6 in 2012 to 7.4 in 2013. The disparity between black and white infant death rates increased in that same time.
The white infant-mortality rate dropped to 6.0 per 1,000 live births from 6.4, and the black rate of infant death dropped to 13.8 from 13.9.