Since July of 2011 the Geary County Perinatal Coalition initiative Delivering Change: Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies has focused on lowering the infant mortality and morbidity rate in Geary County.

In 2011 Geary County’s infant mortality and morbidity rates registered as one of the highest in the state at 10.4 infant deaths per 1,000 births in the period between 2007 and 2010.

“Our goal was an infant mortality rate of 7 per 1,000 live births by 2016,” said Jill Nelson, Co-Chair of the Geary County Perinatal Coalition during a press conference Wednesday at Geary Community Hospital.

“Today we are proud to report that due to the efforts of our local initiative, Delivering Change: Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies, Geary County’s infant mortality rate has dropped to 6.6 per 1,000 live births.”

The decrease is credited directly to the Delivering Change: Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies initiative that focuses on providing at-risk women and their partners with improved access to prenatal education and care, assistance in securing health insurance, and guidance finding financial aid, among other initiatives.

Due to the success of the initiative and the Geary County Perinatal Coalition their program has now become the model other counties across the state are trying to replicate.

“You really are changing lives, and you’re transforming communities, not just here in Geary County but your model is being spread, it’s being used as the model to replicate and the standard of care in service delivery,” said Rebecca Gillam, Assistant Director & Healthy Start Principal Investigator, KU Center for Public Partnerships and Research.

Advancing from its grassroots beginnings, when funding came from the March of Dimes and the Geary Community Health Foundation, Delivering Change today is backed by a five-year, $3.5 million federal Healthy Start initiative award, secured in 2014 with assistance from the Center for Public Partnerships & Research at the University of Kansas and administered by KDHE. The project continues Geary County’s collaborative approach, with KDHE as project manager for the grant and CPPR providing evaluation services.

Even after reaching it’s goal of being under 7 infant deaths per 1,000 live births by 2016, Delivering Change has set it’s eyes on the next goal of being at or below 5 infant deaths per 1,000 live births.