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New BabiesLove.org Addresses Need to Improve IN Infant Mortality Rates

Introducing BabiesLove.org, an Infant Mortality Prevention Program The McMillen Center for Health Education and Healthier Moms and Babies have developed a collaborative mobile health project aimed at reducing infant mortality. The problem of infant mortality is particularly significant in Indiana, where the overall infant mortality rate was 6.7 infant deaths for every 1,000 live births in 2012. With funding from the Indiana State Department of Health, the McMillen Center developed a series of short videos, with accompanying low-literacy print materials, that focus on Indiana’s seven priority areas for the prevention of infant mortality. The seven videos feature local women and present education in a peer-to-peer format, rather than professional to patient. The Babies Love videos and print materials are available at no cost at www.BabiesLove.org.
The Babies Love project has a mobile health (mHealth) focus and takes advantage of the high rate of cell phone usage to deliver an educational message. By texting the word BABIESLOVE to 35350, a link to these videos will be sent to a cell phone. "The video clips will be a great addition to the pool of resources that our staff uses with clients. Our clients will benefit from seeing the information through this medium and the low-literacy print materials will be an added benefit," says Paige Wilkins, Manager of Healthier Mom and Babies. The Babies Love website also offers a free one-hour training for professionals who may want to use the materials with the women they work with.
Holli Seabury, the McMillen Center’s CEO states, "We are very excited to have the Babies Love materials available to anyone who works with women at high-risk of infant mortality. We hope that by having this information right on their cell phones, it will help women access information when they need it, and ultimately reduce infant mortality."