History of Every Baby Guilford (formerly the Guilford County Coalition on Infant Mortality)

In 1988 Guilford County’s infant mortality rate was appallingly high and North Carolina’s rate was the worst in the nation.  A group of Guilford County Public Health staff and concerned community partners came together to form a public / private nonprofit partnership, the Guilford County Coalition on Infant Mortality, and housed it within the Guilford County Department of Public Health.  The Coalition relaunched in 2021, changing the name to Every Baby Guilford.

Adopt-A-Mom

At the time, lack of prenatal care was identified as a major contributing factor to the immense infant mortality rates. Birthing people who did not receive prenatal care were three times more likely to have a low birthweight baby.  Preterm and low birth weight babies were the two leading causes of infant mortality in our community. The Adopt-A-Mom program was created to ensure that all individuals in Guilford County would have access to prenatal care.  The Adopt-A-Mom program met the needs of vulnerable pregnant individuals who “fell through the cracks” in Guilford County.  These individuals were not eligible for government sponsored Medicaid and lacked private insurance or funds to pay for this critical healthcare.  For many years, these individuals were simply showing up at the hospital to deliver their babies, having received no prenatal care.

For 33 years, the Adopt-A-Mom program has continued to partner with medical providers, lab companies, and nonprofits to work together to ensure vulnerable individuals received prenatal care and wrap-around services during and after their pregnancy.  Community physicians provide medical care at a reduced fee.  The program partners with community agencies to ensure appropriate referrals of Adopt-A-Mom patients are made to receive additional support, education, and resources. 

The Adopt-A-Mom program has partnered with many Foundations, businesses, and faith congregations over the years to make this program possible.  These partnerships have allowed the Adopt-A-Mom Program to serve over 9,000 women in our community since its inception. 

Throughout the years, the Adopt-A-Mom program began serving a higher percentage of undocumented residents due to access to Medicaid and Pregnancy Medicaid for US citizens.  The Adopt-A-Mom program became even more of a safety net for prenatal care for an incredibly vulnerable population in our community that needed support and assistance in navigating healthcare.  Medical Interpreters first volunteered through Ameri-Corps and were later hired on staff through grant funding to ensure individuals had the support and resources to effectively navigate prenatal care.  The Adopt-A-Mom Patient Coordinator has evolved into a bi-lingual staff position to more easily enroll women in the program. 

Minority Outreach

In the 1990s, the Coalition worked with the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services Women’s Health Branch through a Minority Outreach Grant to fund Community Health Workers, women in the community considered natural leaders that community members trusted.  These Community Health Workers provided health education and promotion on topics related to infant mortality reduction, identified qualifying women for the Adopt-A-Mom program, and linked individuals and families to community resources.  They were considered a trusted resource for linking individuals to preventative care.  State funding for this program ended in the late 1990s. 

Community Convener

The Coalition held many community convenings, focus groups and town all meetings throughout the years to identify gaps in programming, root cause for infant mortality, and strategies for working to improve Guilford County rates.  In 2008, the Coalition began convening quarterly the Community Action for Healthy Babies Consortium, which brought together all maternal and infant health partners in the community.  The Community Action for Healthy Babies Consortium created a resource map, promoted the latest medical advances for preventing preterm birth, and educated individuals and providers on perinatal mood disorders like postpartum depression.

2020 Relaunch with New Strategic Direction

In 2019, the Guilford County Coalition on Infant Mortality was inspired to relaunch the strategic direction of its work, becoming Every Baby Guilford. “That’s the way we’ve always done it” was no longer going to work if we aim to positively impact infant mortality and eliminate disparities. For 30 years, infant mortality reduction focused on individuals, creating individual-level interventions to help individuals beat the odds. Using a community driven, radically inclusive approach, we intend to change the odds for everyone at the systems-level.

Collective Action Strategic Planning

Through a collective action, community driven approach, we are centering the community so that systems answer to the needs of the community, not to their own status quo practices. We want to be clear on what it would take to move the needle, meeting those needs equitably, and addressing barriers that get in the way. Community involvement is in the building, the doing, the testing, and the adaptation as well. Our multi-year strategic plan explicitly names tackling structural racism and bias to advance health equity by centering those most impacted as an essential strategy going forward.  We believe in the power of community-centered collective action to co-create equitable solutions that transform the continuum of care for birthing people and babies in Guilford and beyond.  

Rather than taking over work that’s already being done, Every Baby Guilford is honoring and amplifying it on a broader scale, becoming a conductor of the community’s orchestra to positively impact infant mortality rates with a systems approach.