Recognizing that a new approach was needed to successfully reduce infant deaths and eliminate the immense disparities in our community, a cross sector of community members, health care professionals, civic and government leaders, faith-based organizations, and funding partners joined together with Every Baby Guilford (formerly the Guilford County Coalition on Infant Mortality) who partnered with Root Cause Institute to create a 5-Year Strategic Plan and Reuben Rink to relaunch the organization, with revisioning our mission, vision, values and changing the name.   

It’s Time for Change

In June 2021, the Guilford County Coalition in Infant Mortality relaunched becoming, Every Baby Guilford, a collective action movement with bold goals and priorities for reducing infant mortality and eliminating disparities.

Using a racial equity lens, Every Baby Guilford is building a radically inclusive collective action movement, that builds collaborative solutions that centers the community (people, parents, children, and families) and works together with community members, frontline caregivers, health care systems civic and government leaders, faith-based organizations, and city and county officials to disrupt these longstanding health outcomes and racial disparities in Guilford County. 

By 2026, we collectively will ensure more Black babies are born healthy and live to celebrate their first birthday, because when we create a healthy Guilford County for Black babies then we create a healthy Guilford County for all of us.

Our work is just beginning.  We must continue to collectively act to accelerate a downward trend and urgently and strategically work together to save ALL of our babies and end the immense disparities our Black families have experienced for far too long. 

Our vision at Every Baby Guilford is that every baby and family will have equitable opportunities and access to achieve the healthiest start in life.  Our mission is to ignite and mobilize Guilford County through partnerships and unified strategies to eliminate racial disparities and prevent infant deaths.

We intend to improve health outcomes and decrease racial disparities in each of the health areas that Black women have historically had poorer outcomes:

• Access to early quality prenatal care
• Preterm birth rates
• Low and very low birthweights 

To accomplish this, we have created  4 Strategic Priorities  as part of our Collective Action Strategic Plan.  These priorities are bringing parents, community partners, and healthcare providers together to execute systems change solutions to address our priority areas and meet or exceed our goals:

1. Advance health equity by addressing systemic racism and implicit bias within the continuum of care for maternal and infant health.
2. Centering Community with radically inclusive community engagement that creates collaborative solutions.
3. Strengthening the continuum of care of reproductive life planning - from preconception to prenatal, to interconception care for equitable access to quality care. 
4. Promoting infant wellness and positive child development.

Through a public/private partnership with Guilford County Department of Health and Human Services, Division of Public Health, the Every Baby Guilford program serves as a backbone entity to educate and mobilize the community to act in order to effectively provide needed services and create a better understanding of how structural racism and implicit bias is affecting pregnant women and their babies.