Intro to audio:
WNIN’s Tim Jagielo spoke with Lynn Herr, director of clinical services and fetal infant and child fatality coordinator, and Charissa Schuetz, director of Outreach Services at Vanderburgh about this announcement, and what led to the reduction in infant mortality.
Full interview below
The Vanderburgh County Health Department has been tracking infant mortality for about 10 years. The definition of infant mortality is the death of a child under age 1.
2024 is the most recent year for studying infant mortality rates, because the health department tracks births for 12 months. They’re reporting 3.8 deaths for 1,000 live births — an improvement on the average of 5.5 deaths for 1,000 live births across 2020-2024.
Charissa Schuetz of the Vanderburgh County Health Department said infant mortality rates are a leading indicator of a communities’ overall health.
“Just because it encompasses so many things that go into having a good infant mortality rate, good social supports, health care access and all of those types of things.”
The effort to reduce infant mortality is a collaboration between the Community Action Team and Health Department, in partnership with local health organizations and community partners. They sought to close gaps in critical needs for expectant mothers, sharing data between them.
This overall effort has been guided by several pillars — one is normalizing home visits for new and expectant families. These allow health care professionals to provide services in the home and expand services.
Another pillar is educating families on safe sleep. Lynn Herr, director of clinical services and fetal infant and child fatality coordinator, said historically, two deaths per year on average are attributed to unsafe sleep practices. But there were none in 2024.
“There's just a multitude of community agencies and having the same message go out to all families has really made a difference in our community,” she said.
Another pillar is normalizing aspirin therapy. The idea is to head off the leading causes of infant mortality — perinatal risk factors. Schuetz said those are things that are present before and during a pregnancy that can impact that pregnancy.
Low dose aspirin is a way to prevent preeclampsia, and can help reduce delivering early, leading to low birth weight babies.
Herr said the next step is to just keep up the community-wide effort — communicating infant mortality rates, being completely transparent and seeking to expand other groups who can bring their resources to the effort.
The current study year — 2025 — does reflect one death due to unsafe sleep, and an increase over 2024. Those final numbers will be communicated next January.
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