Saving Our Babies celebrates six years of bolstering Black maternal and infant health in Dane County

The Dane County Health Council and its partners celebrated six years of its Saving Our Babies (SoB) initiative with an annual press conference held at the Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness (FFBWW) headquarters on Tuesday. The initiative’s innovative care coordination program, ConnectRx Wisconsin, which serves birthing people in Dane County throughout their perinatal journeys, is celebrating two years of delivering promising, tangible success. Saving Our Babies was started by the DCHC and a handful of cross-sector partners, including FFBWW and EQT By Design to address the harrowing rates of Black maternal and infant mortality in Dane County. Its most recent program, ConnectRx, provides qualifying birthing people with wrap-around social, economic, and mental health support. Patients are given a high-risk assessment using a social determinants of health screening tool developed by SoB partners and Epic, which now serves as a model for prenatal care nationwide.  To date, ConnectRx has yielded impressive statistics, including facilitating care for 674 Black pregnant patients, 600 of whom were provided with essential resources like food and shelter. 90% of babies born with doula support successfully reached optimal gestational age, and 84% were born at a healthy birth weight.  “Through this synergistic approach, we have the power...