A collaborative project several years in the making has finally launched. Mama Certified provides Black families with a meaningful way to assess and compare the maternal-related efforts of local birthing hospitals as well as encourage and support hospitals’ efforts to ensure Black parents-to-be and their babies receive respect and care.
Cincinnati's four major hospital systems — Mercy Health, The Christ Hospital Health Network, TriHealth and UC Health — are participating.
"It is absolutely amazing to be sitting in Cincinnati — a town that was the second highest county for infant mortality of a county our size — and now be sitting in the same county where all of our hospital systems are saying yes to equity," says Meredith Shockley-Smith, Ph.D., executive director of Cradle Cincinnati.
RELATED: Cradle Cincinnati focusing on reducing racial disparities, supporting Black birthing people
"We are committed in this city to equitable outcomes. It feels absolutely [momentous] and joyous, and I have nothing but gratitude for the collective impacts in our town."
How it works
"What we did was ask Black women what they wanted and what they saw as a thriving, joyous birth, and what we got to — between that and what hospitals were able to give — is what you see on MamaCertified.org," says Shockley-Smith.
The four local health systems have provided their data around birthing and care, including metrics such as various programs offered, statistics around various data points (training, response to complications, partnerships, breastfeeding services, etc.). That data is collated into a single source where people can see it all at a glance and use that to assess their options, to find the hospital that is right for them.
RELATED: The infant mortality rate in Hamilton County increased slightly in 2022
"We had a board of community advisors that continually reflected on what we were choosing. It bounced back between Black Queens and the Queens Village board and hospital systems to be certain that was something that they could collect. It is a creation and co-creation of what folks wanted on the ground and what folks were able to do in hospital systems," says Shockley-Smith.
Reducing infant mortality
Cradle Cincinnati says overall infant mortality numbers for the past 10 years are trending downward. The agency hasn't released 2023 numbers yet. In 2022, there was a slight increase — 89; 21 more than in 2021 — in the number of babies who died before their first birthday.
At 10,076 births, the infant mortality rate for 2022 was 8.7 deaths per 1,000 live births. Cradle Cincinnati reported 66 deaths in 2021 for an infant mortality rate of 6.4 (66/10,266). That set a record low for a second year in a row. The rate in 2020 was 7.4.
In 2022, Black babies in Hamilton County were nearly three times more likely to die before their first birthday than white babies (13.1/1,000 vs. 4.5/1,000, respectively), the agency reported.
"The hope and the expectation for Mama Certified is that people will engage with the data and the information that is on MamaCertified.org and that they will make a healthy decision for themselves," says Shockley-Smith. "In addition to that, because the data is transparent, we are able to identify ways in which we can improve our equity outcomes. The second hope beyond engaging and giving families a sense of understanding, we hope that we will be able to create interventions and hold accountability to those interventions so that we have better birth outcomes."
Cradle Cincinnati released a new five-year strategic plan in June 2023 to reduce Black infant deaths.
The plan includes three goals:
- Create a community-based ecosystem of support for Black birthing people.
- Support Black birthing people across all stages of pregnancy and parenthood by meeting their basic needs.
- Expand the medical system’s capacity to center the needs of Black birthing people.
The agency formed in 2013 as a collaboration between Hamilton County, Cincinnati, and local health departments, medical systems and community groups with a goal or reducing Hamilton County's infant mortality rate.
