Infant Vitality
All babies deserve to celebrate their first birthday.
About the Initiative
In 2013, we launched the Infant Mortality Reduction Initiative (IMRI) to confront the disproportionately high rates of infant death in portions of St. Louis and the six counties of Missouri’s Bootheel. For over a decade, we worked alongside these communities to understand the root causes and build lasting solutions.
Why it Matters
Newborns in the United States face serious survival risks, and for Black families and families in rural communities, those risks run even deeper. In the decade before IMRI launched, more than 6,200 Missouri babies died before their first birthday, with a third of those deaths concentrated in the Bootheel and St. Louis.
Infant mortality is a complex issue, influenced by a variety of factors, including structural racism and lack of access to culturally-competent care.
What Communities Built
Bootheel Babies and Families and Generate Health continue to lead collaborative efforts in their own communities – bringing partners to the table, building new relationships, strengthening local networks, and growing community power to identify and drive solutions from the ground up.
Meet our IMRI partners
Bootheel Babies & Families
Bootheel Babies & Families supports, educates, and empowers families and community partners to improve maternal and child outcomes, enabling families to thrive.
Generate Health
Generate Health builds collective power to advocate for policies and practices that center, support, and celebrate Black families throughout their pregnancy and parenthood journeys.