Preemies
A $7 million grant from Franklin County is fueling a five-year campaign by hospitals to prevent early births and their health risks.Thursday, December 10, 2009 3:28 AM
By Barbara Carmen and Misti Crane
Published in: THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Eleven years ago, 24 weeks into her first pregnancy, Jieney Sieck lost her first son, Kirin. Hugo, her next, also was stillborn, at 22 weeks. It was only after the Westerville woman lost her father in 2005 and began to feel herself drawn again toward motherhood that she and her husband, Bill, considered another pregnancy. Sieck fought tears yesterday as she stood in the Nationwide Children's Hospital lobby, sharing her story and giving her support to a new $7 million campaign to prevent premature births and improve the lives of babies who arrive before 37 weeks. The multihospital effort, called the Ohio Better Birth Outcomes, already was under way and includes several programs designed to lower rates of premature delivery. A five-year grant from Franklin County, announced yesterday at the hospital, will expand the program.
Finding prenatal care remains a challenge for many women, and the high infant-mortality and prematurity rates are widely considered unacceptable by medical and public-health leaders in Columbus.
One of the efforts to be boosted by the new money involves administering weekly progesterone shots to women at high risk of premature delivery.
Weekly progesterone shots into her hip from week 16 to week 36 of her third pregnancy helped Sieck carry her now 2-year-old daughter, Charlotte, to full term.
"I would have taken 12 shots to the head" to have a healthy pregnancy, Sieck said yesterday.
A program to get those shots to low-income women who call the Pregnancy Care Connection phone line has served more than 170 women, said Dr. Patricia Temple-Gabbe, a physician at Children's and professor of pediatrics at Ohio State University.
"It looks like we're prolonging their average gestation . . . by at least two weeks compared to their previous pregnancies," said Gabbe, a longtime crusader for better and more widely available prenatal care.
Other cornerstones of the collaborative include:
- Linking nurses with expectant mothers to provide education and support. The relationships continue after the baby is born to help get the mom and baby off to a good start.
- Encouraging mothers to practice "safe spacing." Ideally, women should wait 18 to 24 months between pregnancies, Gabbe said. It allows their bodies to recover and allows moms to bond with each child and reduce the stress associated with having several young children.
- Encouraging doctors to avoid scheduling early deliveries unless they are medically necessary. A collaborative across the state already has lowered scheduled C-sections and inductions.
"Money's tight, but this is so important," Franklin County Commissioner Marilyn Brown said.
The county already pays for early education and children's-health programs, she noted. "Without a healthy birth, these programs can't work to their fullest."
The collaborative is being led by physicians and researchers at Children's, Ohio State University Medical Center, OhioHealth and Mount Carmel Health systems, along with other government and nonprofit agencies.
Franklin County Administrator Don L. Brown said the $7 million grant will jump-start the research and education effort during the next five years.
"Hopefully," he said, "they'll be able to sustain the effort from other sources."
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