She discovered that Baltimore started to address the issue in 2009, and by 2015 “they had already seen a 24-25% drop in the number of infant deaths.”Īfter Zeltner published her stories, Cleveland officials contacted her for insights as they were working on an initiative to tackle the problem. And the infant mortality rates before they started to implement their changes were very similar to that very wide disparity between Black and white infant deaths,” Zeltner said. Baltimore, in terms of demographics, income, is pretty similar to Cleveland. “We wanted to find a place that was doing it better but also is very similar to Cleveland with its struggles. She therefore chose a different approach. Going through the news outlet’s archives, she realized that previous health reporters came back to that topic about every 10 years, but there were no improvements. “The problem was big, and it had been around for a long time,” Zeltner said. Black babies were more than two times as likely to die as white babies. We were looking at the rates of infant death across the city and then particularly in Black mothers, because there is a very big disparity between white infant deaths and Black infant deaths,” Zeltner told VOA.Īt the time, Zeltner, who specialized in health journalism for The Plain Dealer news outlet, reported that about 13 Cleveland newborns per 1,000 die before their first birthday. “One of the big impacts is infant deaths. In 2015, journalist Brie Zeltner investigated consequences of Cleveland, Ohio, having one of the highest child poverty rates in the United States.
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