Radio

Going Public: Local Organizations Aim to Lower Infant Mortality Rate in the Bootheel.

“Infant mortality in Missouri’s six Bootheel counties has been an ongoing problem. Recent data shows these counties have some of the highest infant mortality rates in the state.”

Baby Boxinette Could Be Answer To Bootheel’s High Infant Mortality Rate

“Averett delivered Elessandra three weeks early at Saint Francis Medical Center in Cape Girardeau. But before she was able to leave the hospital, her nurse gave her something she wasn’t expecting.” Candice Averett and her then three-week-old daughter Elessandra Averett at their home in Dexter on Jan. 31, 2017.

Video

‘Baby boxes’ now offered to new families at some southeast MO hospitals

“If you are pregnant and living in certain communities in southeast Missouri, you should know about a new gift you’ll get after you give birth. When you go to deliver your baby, you will now be leaving with a baby box. The boxes will be given to new families – in Scott, Stoddard, Pemiscot, Mississippi, Dunklin and New Madrid Counties – in a push to lower the number of infant deaths a year.”

Print

Will a simple cardboard box save Missouri’s vulnerable babies? The Bootheel will soon find out

“Thanks to a long-standing practice in Finland and donations from two St. Louis entities, Billee Williamson and other mothers of newborns in Missouri’s Bootheel have a new tool to combat high rates of sleep deaths: cardboard boxes for their babies to sleep inside.”