Maternal Infant And Child Health Essay

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El Paso over the last 15 years has been a hub for research in maternal, infant, and child health. First, maternal, infant, and child health describes “the health of women of childbearing age (18-45 years) from pre-pregnancy through pregnancy, labor, delivery, and the postpartum period and the health of the child prior to birth through adolescence…” (McKenzie & Pinger, 2012). Maternal, infant and child health serves a community for a variety of reasons. The statistics of maternal, infant, and child health, indicates effectiveness in disease prevention and health promotion services offered to the community. Also, reducing risk factors that would otherwise lead to poor health outcomes can be reduced or prevented if early preventative measures …show more content…

Maternal health aims in achieving the highest quality of life for women throughout their childbearing years. Maternal mortality rate, according to our book, is the death of a woman during pregnancy and/or 48 hours post-pregnancy. Based on our book, the U.S. maternal mortality rate is 9.1 deaths per 100,000 live births. Consequently, the U.S. falls behind compared to other industrialized nations. In fact, the surprising information was that black women were four times more likely to die from pregnancy than their white female counterparts. This is troublesome for our community because 3.0 percent of mothers in El Paso did not receive any prenatal care, according to the Healthy Paso del Norte Report in 2013. Health disparities like these can and should be prevented. I believe women should have access to health care, including preconception and prenatal health care. Furthermore, this would decreases preterm births and low-birth-weight babies. In addition, this would reduce long-term and several health complications throughout future pregnancies, infancy and child …show more content…

Infant mortality rates are death of children younger than 1 year. The infant mortality rate in the U.S. is surprisingly higher than most industrialized nations - the rate is shown later on the text. Much of these deaths are complications caused by lack of care such as; low-birth-weight babies, preterm babies, smoking, substance usage, lack of high quality health care, lack of food and nutrition, and chronic diseases. In contrasts, prevention methods could readily change the outcomes of infant mortality, by simple behavioral changes. According to the Healthy Paso del Norte Report, in 2013 8.8% of babies were low-birth-weight, which is a little bit more than the national average. This would be another great reason to invest in high quality health care for maternal, infant and child health. Considering, our book describes low-birth-weight babies to be “the single most important factor in neonatal death…” (McKenzie & Pinger, 2012).
Child health is one of the most important issues that should involve every community member. Children are the future of America and society. We need to consider the many factors that come into play when acknowledging a child 's development. Although the leading cause of childhood mortality is due to unintentional injuries we can prevent these deaths by preventative measures. Most of these mortalities are caused by motor vehicle

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