Last year, 136 babies in Franklin County died before their first birthdays, but that's the lowest number in at least eight years. Leaders working to save infant lives say they are encouraged, even though additional efforts are needed to lower the number even more.

With 18,240 babies born in 2018, the county infant-mortality rate was 7.5 per 1,000 births. That's a 23 percent drop from the 9.6 deaths per 1,000 births in 2011, when 174 babies died, according to preliminary data released Thursday by Columbus Public Health and the local CelebrateOne public-private coalition to prevent infant deaths.

"It means something is working, which is great," said Erika Clark Jones, CelebrateOne's executive director. "We fight on many fronts when it comes to trying to save babies, and we're headed in the right direction."

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The coalition seeks to reduce the number of deaths per 1,000 births to at least 6.0 by 2020, the goal set in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Healthy People 2020 agenda, which is aimed at improving the health of Americans.

"We have 136 babies who died in our community in 2018. Clearly, it's 136 too many," said Dr. Mysheika Roberts, Columbus health commissioner. "But when you compare that to the year prior, when we had 155, that’s a significant decrease. It's almost 20 families who didn’t have to bury a baby or their child before they turned 1.

"But we have a lot of work to do; we have not lost our focus, and we continue to work hard and feel motivated."

Disappointing, Clark Jones said, was an increase last year in sleep-related deaths to 29, or about 21 percent of the total. That's the highest since at least 2011, the year CelebrateOne looks at to gauge progress. This comes after a significant drop in 2017, which was considered an anomaly, and amid continued efforts to teach families safe sleep practices and reduce these preventable deaths.

Of the sleep-related deaths, 22 were in eight high-risk Columbus neighborhoods that are of special focus for CelebrateOne. They are identified as Northland, the Northeast, Linden, the Near East, the South Side, the Southeast, Franklinton and the Hilltop.

Clark Jones said CelebrateOne and community partners are rolling out several programs that she believes will continue to drive the infant-mortality rate down across the county, and particularly in those neighborhoods, where the rate combined was 10.5 deaths per 1,000 births last year.

Several initiatives target three primary strategies: ramping up safe-sleep education, improving access to prenatal care and expanding enrollment in evidence-based home-visiting programs for expecting and new mothers.

One example is targeting some safe-sleep training to babies' grandparents, who may be inclined to use practices popular in the past, and to babies' siblings, who may often care for them. Another initiative trains operators and workers at salons and barbershops to discuss safe sleep with clients, and one aims to train more "safe-sleep ambassadors" who are encouraged to discuss the issue with community members.

Other plans are to train more people, including those with diverse cultural knowledge, in home visiting and to have 5,000 new women enrolled in the programs by the end of 2020.

Ongoing programs offer free cribs, help homeless pregnant women find stable housing and ease access to public transportation for prenatal health-care visits.

While the decrease in deaths is encouraging, the jump in sleep-related deaths was jolting, said Cathy Lyttle, senior vice president and chief human resources officer at Worthington Industries. Lyttle, who on Wednesday was named chairwoman of the CelebrateOne board, said it's important to remember that changing cultural behaviors takes time.

"I have great hope that we're really starting to see the results we're hoping for, but the sleep number is just a punch in the gut we didn’t want to see," she said. "So we have to be ever vigilant and stay on task to make sure the number comes down."

Among other numbers found in the 2018 county data:

• Nearly 52 percent of the babies who died were black, nearly 35 percent were white, just more than 4 percent were Hispanic and nearly 10 percent were identified as other races.

• The mortality rate among white babies was 4.9 deaths per 1,000 births, a 35 percent decrease from 2011.

• The mortality rate among black babies was 12.4 deaths per 1,000 births, a 28 percent decrease from 2011. That still means black babies are 2.5 times more likely to die than white babies.

Addressing infant mortality, Roberts and Clark Jones said, takes community partners pulling together to address a number of factors that could affect a woman's health, such as neighborhood crime, unstable housing, transportation challenges, insufficient health insurance,a lack of education or consistent access to healthy food.

"If we are making life better for folks in these key areas, ultimately we're going to affect the health of mom or a would-be mom, and then hopefully lessening the rates of preterm births, driving down mortality rates," Clark Jones said. "That’s big work, and it takes the work of the whole community."

For information on CelebrateOne programs or assistance, call the City of Columbus Service Center at 614-645-3111.

jviviano@dispatch.com

@JoAnneViviano