SIDS: minorities statistics

• Currently, the national infant mortality rate for Black babies is 13.7 per 1,000, compared to a rate of 5.6 per 1000 for White babies, 3.5 per 1000 for Asian babies, and 5.3 to 6 per 1000 for Latino babies.
• Black babies are four times as likely to die as infants due to complications related to low birthweight as compared to non-Hispanic white infants.
• African Americans have 2.3 times the infant mortality rate as non-Hispanic whites
• African Americans had 1.8 times the sudden infant death syndrome mortality rate as non-Hispanic whites.
• College- and graduate-school educated black mothers have a higher infant mortality rate than white moms who didn’t finish high school
• The infant mortality rate for African American mothers with over 13 years of education was almost three times that of non-Hispanic white mothers.
• Black women who get prenatal care in the first trimester have double the infant mortality rate of white mothers with first-trimester care
• Only 17 percent of all U.S. births were to African-American families, but 33 percent of all low-birthweight babies were African-American, according to one report.
• Black women with similar levels of prenatal care as Hispanic women (generally less educated and with lower incomes than blacks) have higher rates of low birth weight, preterm deliveries, and infant mortality.
• According to Dr. Michael Lu, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology and public health at UCLA, researchers have found that even when they control for such varied factors as poverty, housing, employment, medical risk, abuse, social support and so on, 90 percent of the differences in birth weight between black and white moms remains unaccounted for. “Most studies have looked at black-white differences during pregnancy, for example, differences in prenatal care utilization or maternal behavior,” he says. “What we’re finding is that these differences really explain very little of the disparities in birth outcomes.”
http://blogs.babycenter.com/mom_stories/my-anti-blog-for-infant-mortality-awareness-month/

SIDS: North Carolina improved statistics

North Carolina’s infant morality rate declined in 2009 to the lowest level on record.
The state Department of Health and Human Services said Friday there were 7.9 deaths for every 1,000 live births in 2009, compared to 8.2 deaths the year before. The rate has improved by more than 35 percent since the late 1980s.
The mortality report showed the number of deaths attributed to sudden infant death syndrome fell from 136 children under 1 year old in 2008 to 98 last year. SIDS deaths went up sharply in 2008 but Tom Vitaglione with the North Carolina Child Fatality Task Force said there’s still no explanation why.
The mortality rate among infants identified as minorities rose last year.
http://www.wral.com/news/state/story/8309430/