Creating a Data Infrastructure to Support Practice and Innovation

This component of the Public Health Impact Initiative for Healthy Births includes two sub-components:

 

Community Research Information for Healthy Births

The Center for Urban Population Health is working to create a data infrastructure that links, analyzes, and disseminates Milwaukee community data on factors linked with infant mortality and the associated disparities among racial and ethnic groups within a population health framework.  Led by Ron A. Cisler, PhD; David Frazer, MPH; and Trina Salm Ward, MSW from the Center for Urban Population Health and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, this project has:

• Built an evidence base within a population health framework of social determinants, interventions, and policies affecting birth outcomes.
• Introduced the population health framework and presented data on social determinants at the August 2010 Milwaukee Fetal and Infant Mortality Review Committee Meeting, Milwaukee, WI and at the Healthy Babies Summit and Association of Women's Obstetric and Neonatal Nursing Meeting, Pewaukee, WI (October 14, 2011).  View the slides.
  
• Continued updating and disseminating the Catalog of Initiatives Addressing Disparities in Birth Outcomes which provides information on programs and initiatives in Southeast Wisconsin.
• Obtained funding from the United Way of Greater Milwaukee to develop a website that provides links/access to identified determinants for community programs and organizations and researchers.

Milwaukee Fetal and Infant Mortality Review

This funding has helped the City of Milwaukee Health Department expand the City of Milwaukee Fetal and Infant Mortality Review Committee to abstract data on fetal and infant deaths in all of Milwaukee County.  This component will (a) identify the factors that place infants at risk for death before the age of one and women at risk for stillbirth and preterm births, and (b) conduct a multidisciplinary review and provide recommendations for strategic community action.  Led by Eric Gass, PhD, and Karen Michalski, MSW, both at the City of Milwaukee Health Department, this project has accomplished the following:

• Abstraction of 2011-2012 Milwaukee City and Milwaukee County infant deaths and stillbirths.
• Data entry and analysis of 2010 City of Milwaukee infant death and stillbirth abstraction.  Some supplementary records are still being abstracted.
• Interviews of mothers whose infants died and mothers of stillborn infants between 2011 and 2012 are being conducted - currently 34 mothers have agreed to share their experiences.