finding out you're pregnant can be life changing and making
sure you're healthy during that pregnancy isn't always the easiest.
Then after that comes when you have a new baby to care for,
despite any variety of circumstances.
This afternoon,
we have Cindy Pisano with the Mercy Health Connections and she joins us.
Hi, Cindy. Thanks so much. Thanks so much for being here today.
So we want to talk about how the hospital is reaching more
families with this program that you have called the Getting Healthy Zone.
Talk to me a little bit about it. All right.
So the getting healthy zone really is about
um addressing the issue of infant mortality.
Um I don't know if you know, but that's a very serious problem in our community.
And um this project is in the 43608, 10 and 20 zip code areas.
Um because those are the incidents that
have the highest incidence of infant mortality.
So we're out there in the community right there with residents
in their neighborhoods um helping them understand what some of the risk
factors are and how they can mitigate those risk factors so
that they can have a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby.
So those specific zip codes, what are those risk factors that, that these parents,
these moms are facing?
So,
um one of the risk factors is being African
American women in our community who are African American,
their babies die three times more often than Caucasian babies.
Um
who are under the age of 20 women who smoke,
women who don't have early access to prenatal care also are more at risk for having
an infant death.
How prevalent is this in, in these types of communities?
So when we're looking at infant mortality,
they look at the rate as per every 1000 births.
And right now in Lucas County, we have nine deaths out of every 1000
1000 births.
And that last year translated into 44 babies who died
just right here in our county
and those three codes that's throughout our county.
Um
Actually, with our project when we started in 2018,
um we had some of the highest incidents.
Um actually 12% of the babies that were born in Lucas County um that ended up dying,
um lived in those zip code areas and now in 2022 that number came down to 5%.
So we know that we're doing something right.
Uh So talk to me a little bit about what you guys are doing in this
program to be able to target these groups and create a healthier community for them.
So we have a two prong approach.
Um The first approach is we're trying to get women into um services.
We know that if we get women into early um prenatal care,
if we're able to connect them with a program
that we have throughout our community called pathway,
we're able to have healthy birth outcomes.
Um However,
we want to take a step back because we know that
infant mortality is an indicator of the health of the community.
So if you don't have good health in the community,
you usually have a higher infant mortality rate.
So what we did in 2018 is we went to the community to find out what are the stressors,
what are the issues that you're experiencing?
And then how can we put together a plan?
How can we pull together the right community partners so
that we can address the needs that are going on.
So some of the things they talked about
is they wanted information on infant mortality.
Um They wanted to know how to have healthy babies.
They wanted to know how to just improve their health overall.
A lot of our residents have problems with diabetes
and other chronic diseases or high blood pressure
and they wanted economic security.
They had a lot of issues, you know,
and just in terms of being able to provide for their families as
well as wanting to just have um healthy activities in the community,
Cindy, it seems like stopping it before it starts.
Is, is really the main goal of the program here. Absolutely.
So we've done a lot of getting out into the community.
We host events where people are at.
It's hard to get people to come in for a program or, or a seminar or a service.
So we go to places like C A marketplace and we
have tables and we introduce people to resources and information.
Um You know, we are taking health screenings out to the community.
Mercy has their nurses available two times each month,
every single month at Camp branch library and also
at way and Palmer to do free health screenings.
And you know what,
45% of the people that have been screened so far have had high blood pressure
and 25% of those people have had um high blood glucose levels.
Wow. Yeah. So we can find all of this information on Mercy Health as well.
You can, you can. All right. Well, thank you so much Cindy for joining us.
We really appreciate you telling us about the
health Getting Healthy Zone program. Thank you.