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Oh, mhm. Mhm. Okay, Yeah. Mhm. Yeah. Mhm. You okay? Mhm. Hi, I'm Senator Lawton Child's, and I'd like to welcome you to the Lawton Child's update. Today. We're gonna talk about the problem of infant mortality in America the number of babies who are born alive but die before their first birthday.

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While there's not a better place in the world to live than the United States, there's a list of countries where it's actually safer to be born. It's hard to believe that a country with as much wealth and know how as ours can't protect the very future of its people are Children.

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Currently, the United States ranks 19th among industrialized nations in terms of infant mortality. Nations such as Iceland, Belgium, Hong Kong, even Singapore all have a lower infant mortality rate than America. That means that a baby born in Singapore has a better chance of celebrating its first birthday and one born in the United States.

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In 1985 alone, more than 40,000 babies died before reaching their first birthday. This tragedy was a focal point of the National Convention and pediatricians in Washington. Some of our nation's most noted baby doctors and researchers shared their concern over the high infant mortality rate in America, if the mortality tends to be used as an index of health care of a country, and because it's convenient to use and the kind of care that a country gives to its citizens and to its Children.

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So it takes on a special significance in terms of our national pride and care that we have for our Children and our comparisons with other countries, the largest factor that determines whether the baby is likely to survive or not it is it's birth weight. The baby under 2500 g is much more likely to die, and particularly the baby under 1500 g about 3 £3.5 is far more likely to die.

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So that's the greatest predictor of infant survival as its birth weight. The other other major causes birth defects or congenital anomalies, which is a real problem for us in dealing with how to deal with it, whether we can correct some of these abnormalities by surgery, whether there are other medical treatments that can be devised to deal with them.

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But here again, we're looking down the pike towards prevention of congenital anomalies and birth defects. Another major causes sudden infant death syndrome that occurs later, usually after the first between the first and the 12th month of life. We still don't know what causes a sudden infant death syndrome.

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We have researchers looking at this issue, trying to find out what it is that causes this problem so that we may develop means of prevention as a whole throughout the country. The access of the uninsured underclass to medical care is insufficient and principally because, uh, the amount of care isn't there.

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And their ability to get to the doctors, uh, is obstructed by various by lack of money, principally uh huh. So that I'd say there was a basically, it's a political social problem of a major policy proportions that has not been yet faced up to buy this country.

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And the situation, in my opinion, has gotten worse over the last four or five years. Obviously, there's a complex interchange between federal government, local state governments in which I think all you need to play a role and local initiatives, creative ways to solve local problems have to grow out of local situations.

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But I do think that the federal government can set some standards, can provide opportunities for training. People can provide a stimulus for some of these exciting demonstration projects, which can then be adapted locally. And at the moment, I'm afraid the federal government isn't doing enough along those lines.

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The health of the mother is intimately related to the health of her, offspring said. In very simple way. Healthy mothers tend to have healthy babies, and as my time might indicate, smoking is a very important part of of contributing in an untoward way to both infant health and certainly child health later, later on, smoking has been identified as accounting for anywhere between 20 to 40% of low birth weight in the United States.

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So just from a simple preventive approach, not smoking would go a long way at reducing low birth weight and consequently reducing infant mortality in the United States. There are certainly other issues. Being healthy involves good nutrition, fitness, proper rest, proper exercise, um, dealing with stress, coping with the whole variety of issues.

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But in general, being healthy is the first step in having a healthy baby and certainly being able to be a healthy parent and nurture the child later on in life. The problem of infant mortality affects all of us. That's why Congress created the National Commission to Prevent Infant Mortality, a commission of which I am chairman.

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It's a pretty distinguished panel. The 15 members include the secretary of health, education and welfare, members of Congress, the controller general of the United States, representatives of state governments and experts in maternal and child health care. I didn't want the commission to become one of those government agencies that hires a large staff and stays in business forever.

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So our commission must conduct research, make findings and file a report all within two years. Since our first meeting last September, we've held four national hearings. We've examined the roles of federal and state governments, the media, the private sector and looked at what other nations are doing to combat infant mortality.

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We've learned a lot from those meetings. We know, for example, that low birth weight infants those under £5.5 or 40 times more likely to die in their first months of their lives than normal weight infants. And we also know that prenatal care is the best way to prevent early pregnancy and low birth way.

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At our hearing in Chicago, we heard from community leaders about what's being done on the local level to provide prenatal counseling. While local governments have worked hard to fill the gaps, much more needs to be done. Congressman Rich in Durban is from Illinois. He underscored the tragedy of infant mortality and the cost associated with it.

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Our failure to solve this problem will cost us dearly. Medical bills to the government at all levels, uncompensated losses by hospitals, special education teachers will be needed because of disabilities. These Children will suffer more welfare recipients and more crime statistics. Wasted lives of tomorrow's workers And the irony, of course, is it's within our reach to do something about it.

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We can deliver comprehensive prenatal care to all of the poor pregnant women in the United States who are presently not served at about half the cost that we're presently paying for the sick infants in America. For their first year, we spend about $2.1 billion a year for those sick Children.

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For half of that amount, we can avoid the human tragedy and the cost, Congressman Durban makes a telling point. We have the resources to curb infant mortality in our country. What's missing is a better partnership between federal, state and private initiatives. We've got to identify the gaps in service and find a way to fill them in.

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While in Chicago, the commission vested the Center for Successful Child Development, known as the Beethoven Project. After a nearby elementary school, the center is an early intervention project. It's aimed at preventing educational failure among economically disadvantaged Children. The project is sponsored by the Ounce of Prevention Fund and the Chicago Urban League.

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The center serves poor Children and families living in the rent subsidized Robert Taylor Housing Project. It provides four basic early intervention program. Home and center based family support services, maternal and child health services and early childhood education. Amazingly, through the efforts of the Beethoven project, the infant mortality rate in the area and serves has dropped dramatically.

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Don Simmons is from the Chicago Urban League, but in terms of the Grand Boulevard community, which the Beethoven Project is a part of which Robert Taylor Homes is a part of 1983 the Grand Boulevard community had about 30 deaths infant deaths per 1000 live births. In 1986 that number was reduced to 17 infant deaths per 1000 live births.

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That's a significantly a significant drop. A key to success is the center's home visitors or family advocates, women hired and trained by the center to do door to door canvassing of the neighborhood. They locate pregnant women, and they recruit them into the program. Eddie Van is a family advocate.

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She outlined a typical work day, and when we do, once we get to work, we get our paperwork prepared to go out in the field and what we do and get out of the field. We go and visit our participant that we have in our case, the now.

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But if we run across and expecting parents, we try to get them enrolled in the program. If they are not ready to be enrolled at that time, then we leave literature in the number they can call us when they're ready. What we do in the home is a variety of things.

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We check on the mother and the baby and all the siblings and make sure that they are having any problems that they might need help with. If they are, then we give them whatever help we can. If we we can help them, then we refer them to the agency that can.

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The center also provides educational and support groups for parents. The program is designed to build parenting skill and increase the parents' knowledge of their child's development. Paulette Black Shirt and her son's father, Marcial, believe the program has helped them to become better parents. The whole program is to keep the family together and, you know, to educate us as a family.

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We're not as a as really as a family now because you know she lives here and I live with my mom and but it's bringing us together as a family, you know, it's like it's like I spent a slow process, but we can see the growth in it.

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You can see the girlfriend because we just we just have a different attitude towards with each other now to a little bit more love than you. And then basically the center itself is a family unit. We classify ourselves as a family, and if someone else in the group has a problem, we all have a problem so we try to help that particular person with the problem and then, you know and the family as a whole is more united.

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At the center of the Beethoven Project also operates the Head Start program, available to Children aged three and older. Irvine B. Harris founded both the Ounce of Prevention Fund and the Harris Foundation. Together, he and the Department of Health and Human Services have provided more than a million dollars for the project.

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He believes early intervention and prenatal care will go a long ways towards preventing infant mortality. 700,000 kids will graduate this year, unable to read their diplomas, and another 700,000 will drop out of high school. Now we cannot, as a nation succeed we cannot compete in the world if we don't do a much better job of education.

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And there's no question in my mind that the cause of that bad education in the inner city starts with Children from the time they were born or before they're born. By the time they're born three months before they're born, they have 10 billion neurons in the back of their head here, and if they don't have those 10 billion neurons hooked up in the following 21 months.

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Like a computer, they'll never succeed, and that's what we have to do. We have to get better prenatal care. It starts much, much earlier. There's plenty of science now to tell us that, and we still are not acting on what science we have available. So far.

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We've learned a great deal about infant mortality. We know that low birth weight is one of the primary causes and that prenatal care is the most cost effective way of preventing it. We also know that we need to pull together all of our resources if we're going to reduce the infant mortality rate in America.

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The Beethoven project is an example of what can be done when government and private concerns come together to solve a problem. When we return, we'll see some of the commission's recommendations. Yeah, yeah, good health at birth to be wished for, to be worked for together. Welcome back.

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We know now The best way to prevent infant deaths is to reduce the number of low birth weight babies. The National Commission has identified two major recommendations which must be adopted if we're going to enhance the health and wellbeing of mothers and infants. First, we must encourage the American people to make infant mortality a national priority.

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And second, we must have universal access to be able to get maternity and early pediatric care. As a nation, we must eliminate the barriers that prevent mothers from receiving prenatal and pediatric care. Indeed, universal access to prenatal and pediatric care should be the right of every person in need.

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The effectiveness of prenatal care for infants and young Children is well documented. Prenatal care saves money and lives. The Federal Institute of Medicine estimates that for every $1 spent on prenatal care, $3.38 are saved over the cost of intensive care for a premature baby. For as little as $400 per expected mother, we can provide prenatal care, which in turn will save thousands and thousands of dollars over a low birth weight baby.

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Simply put, the commission believes that no woman should be denied preventative health care because the system keeps her from receiving it. Prenatal and early pediatric care are too important to go without. In order to meet the needs of pregnant women, each state must develop and implement a para natal plan.

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State services need to be set up to provide educational, medical, nutritional and social services for all pregnant women, infants and Children. The Community of Caring Program has been working to address these needs in Washington, D. C. The program was started six years ago with a grant from the Joseph P.

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Kennedy Jr Foundation. Community of Caring Works closely with Georgetown University and the District of Columbia City government. The program provides instruction in basic health, maternity and infant care and the poor inner city areas. Linda Joseph is the director of Washington's Hunt Place Clinic. The uniqueness of the project is that provides early and frequent prenatal care by certified nurse midwives in the District of Columbia's two clinics.

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Hunt Place Clinic in Adams Morgan Clinic. Uh, we try to get the adolescents in early for prenatal care, and we've achieved that through outreach and by word of mouth. The kids like coming to the nurse midwives. The uniqueness of the program is that the nurse midwives provide more frequent early prenatal visits, and in the last trimester they see the kids every week.

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The adolescents every week also the program provides a team approach. There's a physician on the team, a nurse, a social worker and a nutritionist. Yeah, all the team works together in the out to improve the outcomes of the pregnancy, and our goal is to have healthy fat, good weight babies.

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And we have done that. The community of carrying statistics have shown that our average weight of our babies are almost £7. Our infant mortality rate is about half of the city's the D. C. Washington, D. C. Has an infant mortality rate of 22 per 1000 live births, and ours is about half that.

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Programs like the Community of Caring can go a long ways towards providing care for pregnant women. But in some rural areas where few services exist, other alternatives need to be addressed. One of the big problems faced in Florida is a shortage of doctors and nurse midwives in rural areas.

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While the National Health Service Corps was established to provide care and underserved communities, we must expand that program and recruit more doctors and nurse midwives. As chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee, which oversees the core, I'm working to expand the program by providing an educational loan repayment system.

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This will allow students who choose to join the health service Corps to have their school loans repaid by the government. If they serve for at least two years in a rural area, it will be patterned after similar programs now offered to teachers. Next year, we hope to add more than 350 doctors and nurse midwives to the core.

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Our second recommendation calls for a broad based and sustained effort to encourage the American public to make the health and wellbeing of mothers and infants one of our nation's top priorities. The public needs to know more about the problems of infant mortality and how they are affected.

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We're asking if the president deliver an annual report card on Children's health and well being on Child Health Day, A panel of media professionals will be established to design and implement a national public awareness campaign to promote maternal and child health and target some of our at risk groups.

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They're already some exciting programs dealing with infant mortality on television. The NBC affiliate in Washington has been promoting a program called Beautiful Babies. It's a multiyear awareness and information campaign designed to get mothers into prenatal care. Henry Osborne is manager of the community affairs for the station.

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This this project beautiful babies right from the start. It's one of the most exciting programs I've ever dealt with in my life and fulfilled for me a personal goal. I came from 13 kids in the South Side of Chicago, and my mother never got prenatal care, if you can imagine that.

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But we had visiting nurses in those days and they would come around and provide their services. During the past 78 years of visiting Nurse Association has just been totally wiped out. And there, um, we are filling a void of sorts with that to see the positive, uh, contributions of doctors and lawyers, um, of health care, professional church and civic groups all come together to work on oneness on this one common problem.

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It's very exciting. We have about 35 celebrities who have taped public service announcements and appeared on our programs. People from Bob Hope to the Cosby kids, uh, Scott Valentine from Family Ties. What's interesting to us is that when we asked these people, uh, to tape P S A s for us, they almost always agree.

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I mean, no, none of these people are opposed to having anyone healthy ability, and if they think that they're they're they're taping the public service announcement can make a difference and they give freely of their time. We've seen an increase in prenatal visits in the district public health clinics of 25% which is phenomenal for us.

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That represented about 3 35 100 new visits that the District government hadn't seen before. As a matter of fact, the district told us that before the campaign started, prenatal visits at public health clinics were down. So we've we've seen a difference there. The march I'm sorry.

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Blue Cross and Blue Shield just completed. There are 2nd, 3rd partner so march down blue gospel shell and in the television station, Blue Cross and Blue Shield has just completed a survey of, uh, of private health clinics that provide prenatal care. And they're saying that they've seen an increase.

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The number they're using right now is 12 to 15% increase. Um, but, uh, we think there's an even greater increase. As you can see, the beautiful babies campaign has proven itself to be a successful tool in educating the public. She didn't. State and local government should get involved by doing the same, and Hollywood can get into the act as well.

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Organizations like the Screen Actors Guild should convene a national group to speak out on behalf of Children's health. If we're going to win the battle, education will be one of the keys to our success. These are just some of the recommendations being suggested by the national commission.

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Hopefully, by the end of summer, there will be a greater awareness about the threat of infant mortality and what we as a nation must do to save our infants. When we return, we'll look again at the Miami River. Uh huh. The eternal miracle. A healthy, joyous young life.

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A new beginning. But miracles don't just happen. Health care before birth is the best insurance for having healthy babies at birth. If you're pregnant, get good prenatal care. Welcome back. More than two years ago, we visited the Miami River, and we learned how the byproducts of the nation's war on drugs has turned the once beautiful waterway into a floating junk yard.

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Everywhere we look, the scene was the same boat seized from drug smugglers were being stored on the river, rusting away and costing the taxpayer millions of dollars in storage fees each year. That situation is, the Customs Department testified in a recent Senate hearing in Washington, has now changed.

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If I went down on the Miami River, I'm not going to find a river, a full of boats that are rotten and deteriorating ships. Ah, they're being processed properly and yes, sir, and they're being made and the river can be used for something. Besides, the storing of derelict no longer looks like an Oriental bizarre.

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Well, now, let me ask you this. If the river's that way, is there another river or harbor somewhere where all of them are or being tucked? No, sir. Miami is the largest place for seizure of vessels, and there is no place else in the United States that has, and an inventory of seizures like there's not a hidden harbor somewhere that's going to be full of shift.

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If there is, it's very well hidden. Our investigation of the Miami River also turned up laxity and government operations elsewhere. We found, for instance, almost $250 million in cash squirreled away in government. Safe deposit boxes are office safe. That money, like the boats had been confiscated and drug bust.

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And like the boats, the money was not being properly cared for. Taxpayers were losing millions of dollars because the money had not been deposited in interest bearing accounts. Happily, our most recent hearing revealed a turnabout in that area as well. The government, since it adopted my suggesting for depositing seized money and interest bearing accounts, gained $23 million in interest last year alone.

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Mark Richard, the deputy assistant attorney general, testified about what the new procedures mean. Over $273 million was deposited in the seized asset deposit fund. The average monthly deposits into the fund have more than doubled from 84 million $21 million. This unprecedented activity has increased dramatically. The net cash balance in the fund from 116.

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7 million I'm 87.6 million on May 1 1987 to 204.3 million on May 31st 1988. The net cash balance since the beginning of fiscal year 87 has more than quadrupled in another area. The news is not so good. However, are hearing showed the government is still dragging its feet on seized real estate and owns everything from horse farms in Virginia to condominiums in Miami.

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These properties, like the cash in the boats, are from drug busts. The government seems simply unable to quickly research the titles, determine any outstanding leans and put the properties up for sale. The inaction cost US money. Legislation I have pending in Congress would, however, forced the government to hire outside title experts and real estate agents to aggressively market these properties.

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It would put real estate in the same category as the Miami River boats and the seas cache and return dollars from drug bust to the treasury. Well, this update is our last. My Senate career draws to a close within a few months, and I want to appreciate your kind words of support for these updates this new way we've had of communicating with you about government programs which affect Florida and the rest of the nation.

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Thank you for joining me on our last edition of the Lord and Chows update. Uh huh. Mhm. Okay, okay, okay. Yeah. What? Mhm. Oh, yeah. Mhm. Mhm. Yeah, yeah. Mhm.