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Highlands Today

Highlands County Infant Mortality Rate Is 37% Higher Than State

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By Gary Pinnell | Highlands Today

Published: October 26, 2007

SEBRING — In Highlands County, six infants died in 2004, seven in 2005, and 11 in 2006.

Those don't seem like high numbers, considering that 1,004 babies are born here every year.

But take a second look: the number of infant deaths has almost doubled in two years, and Mary Jo Plews is troubled.

Plews, executive director of Healthy Start Coalition of Hardee, Highlands and Polk counties, said a committee is still looking at individual cases in Highlands County to determine why the infant mortality rate went up so drastically.

One reason, she realized, is that Highlands is a small county, so the statistics themselves are small. For instance, Lafayette County had only three infant deaths from 2004-06, but since there were only 295 live births in the same three years, the mortality rate was 11.7 percent, one of the highest in the state.

Broken down racially and ethnically, death rates among Hispanics and whites are low, according to FloridaCHARTS.com. However, the Florida Department of Health Web site showed two African-American babies died in 2004, four in 2005, and six in 2006.

Only 64 percent of all Highlands County babies got prenatal care during the first trimester, so more than one-third of the mothers didn't see a doctor at all, and that's where pre-natal education begins, Plews said.

Hispanics who are migratory workers tend to go to the doctor less, and get less pre-natal care, she confirmed. So why is their infant mortality rate low?

"It's a little bit of mystery," Plews said. Her feeling is that migratory Hispanic mothers continue with their cultural eating habits. Once they settle in a permanent place, they begin to overeat like Americans.

"Then they start to have the same problems we have. But Hispanics have pretty good birth outcomes," Plews said.

Even less is known about why black babies die more often than other races.

Education Is The Key

Jill Jernigan is a registered nurse and the coordinator of childbirth education at Florida Hospital.

"A lot of deaths are preventable," Jernigan said, others aren't. Some mothers exercise, eat healthy food, and don't drink or smoke, but despite doing all the right things, they deliver a premature baby after 26 weeks.

It's also impossible to explain why some babies die from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. But some rollover deaths were previously classified as SIDS, Jernigan said. In Highlands County, four co-sleeping deaths have occurred in the past year.

That's something post-natal health experts are trying to change, with a "Beds for Babies" program. It's controversial, because mothers have traditionally breastfed their babies in bed, and couples have slept with their babies in a family bed.

"Some say you can co-sleep safely, but it increases the risk," Jernigan said. "We don't say, 'Don't breastfeed in bed.' "

She has no suggestions about how to make bedsharing safer, but she doesn't approve of simply sticking a pillow between mother and baby.

"Pillows are a big no-no. The child could suffocate on the pillow too," Jernigan said.

Jernigan, in the classes she teaches at Florida Hospital, tells parents to place babies on their back for sleeping, to have a mattress that's fitted to the crib, to allow no stuffed animals or toys in the crib, and to sleep with the baby in the parent's room for the first six months. Unfortunately, most parents don't come to the classes.

"I'd say about 15 percent," Jernigan said. Some are having their second or third babies, some are working, some read the information elsewhere, she conceded. But some are getting little or no post-natal education.

In Polk County, there is a half-cent indigent health care sales tax. It has paid for the distribution of 500 portable cribs in four months to parents who can't afford one.

Mary Foy, assistant director of Human Services, said Highlands County doesn't have a similar program, and it's difficult for the government to get grants.

Instead, Plews said, Healthy Start is looking for donors of safe cribs.

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