TOLEDO, Ohio — Fifty families in Lucas County last year lost a child younger than one year old, according to the Toledo-Lucas County Health Department.
Queens Village Toledo is a local program working to help reduce that number and change racial disparities affecting birth outcomes among Black women.
TLCHD's data shows that the infant mortality rate in Lucas County slightly increased in 2023 after being on a downward trend the two years prior, and Crystal King, coordinator of Queens Village Toledo, says the group will continue working to decrease the number of babies lost every year.
The Queens Village program began in Cincinnati and expanded, starting the Toledo chapter in 2021.
"We actually go to community health workers, go to the houses of the moms, or even meet at a community space like their doctor's office or different places around the community," King said.
The Northwest Ohio Pathways Hub too is committed to the clients it serves. Assistant Director Holly Pappada said, "our goal is really to have healthy moms babies and people in general and we do that by essentially lowering their stress."
The organization uses events like Babies in Bloom, which met Monday at the Wayman Palmer YMCA in central Toledo, to connect with low-income individuals who need medical care and social services with the hopes of improving overall health outcomes.
"Since when we're usually looking at infant mortality, we look at infant mortality in terms of the county or the states," Pappada said. "But for our particular program, we're really looking at moms who have a lot of needs and then we're looking to see if we're impacting infant mortality directly for just our client population."
Pappada says clients enrolled in the program for about 90 days or more tend to have better birth outcomes than clients who are not.
Attaining better outcomes takes a village, including community healthcare workers providing care coordination with various medical clinics and social service agencies, she said.