Heads Up on Infant Mortality: Knit a Baby Cap to Raise Awareness About Infant Mortality

As an African American mother of three healthy girls the issue of infant mortality in the Black community is one that concerns me greatly. I was perusing the dc/md/va fiber arts group on Ravelry.com and I saw this article about the alarming rate of infant mortality for minority infants in the DC/MD/VA area.

I was glad to step in and help with the "Caps to the Capital" program that had the goal of knitting thousands of infant caps to keep newborns warm in developing countries. It was a way of raising awareness about infant mortality in developing countries, but when I heard about how many newborns are dying here in the DC area I jumped at the chance to do my part to raise awareness and get involved.

Please join me and knit up a few hats to help raise awareness about infant mortality in urban areas, and then the hats will be donated to newborns in local hospitals.

Here is the article with all of the details about the project.

“Heads Up on Infant Mortality”.

This project is to promote public awareness regarding the huge numbers of babies who do not reach their first birthday by knitting or crocheting infant hats in remembrance of them. This project is being done in Chicago, Florida, New Mexico, Richmond Virginia, and DC by me. We hope to present these infant hats to our local elected officials during the last week in September. At the end of the public awareness project the DC hats will be given to infants as “Going Home” gifts when they live the local NICU units. We need as many infant hats as we can get!!!!

A client of mine told me how her heart was touched by the hats and blankets her preemie twin daughter received as a gift when they left the Washington Hospital Center NICU.

The patterns are on my web site www.BirthingHandsDC.com. Infant hats should be sent to me by September 15th. Recently WPFW Radio did an interview on this project and I hope to get more press attention.

I need help getting these infant hats made by the September 15th deadline. More would be better. I would like to flood local NICUs with these hats as “Going Home” gifts of their babies.

Can you help spread the word and get folks knitting and crocheting?

Claudia Booker,
CD (DONA) (ICTC), CCCE, LLI BPC and BPCPA

Did you Know?

In the District of Columbia during 2004 - 2006:

Live Births:

Of the live births, 57.9% were African American, 25.4% were white, 14.1% were Hispanic, 2.2% were Asian, and .1% where Native American.

In 2005, there were 109 infants who died before reaching their first birthdays. Of that number 17.2% were African American, 7.2% were Hispanic and 3.4% were white. African American babies were 5 times more likely as white babies to die during their first year.

Pre Term Births:

In 2006, 16% of the infants born (1, 3860) were born preterm.

During 2004 – 2006, preterm birth rates were highest for African American infants (18.5%), followed by Hispanics (13.6%), Asians (11.0%) and whites (9.7%). African American babies were twice as likely to be born preterm as white babies.
Low Birth Weight:

In 2006 1 of 9 babies (11.5% of the live births) were low birth weight.

Low birth weight rates were highest for Native American infants (21.7%), followed by African American infants (13.2%), Hispanic infants (13.6%), Asians (9.4%) and whites (6.9%). Native American babies were three times as likely to be born preterm as white babies.