Ask Detroit Medical Center emergency room nurse Jodie M. Cole, R.N., what she thinks of the March of Dimes-sponsored "Prematurity Awareness Month" and the veteran health care provider lights up like Comerica Park for a Tigers night game.
"As the mother of a premature baby who spent 26 days in the (DMC Hutzel Women's Hospital) Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, I'm a huge fan of the DMC's ongoing campaign to reduce preterm birth," Cole said. "When my 3-year-old Billy was born prematurely at Hutzel, I got an up-close look at just how hard it is for these premature babies to survive. Billy spent nearly a month in the NICU, but we were fortunate because he got through it and he's doing just fine today.
"That experience taught me the vital importance of doing everything we can to prevent preterm-birth in Detroit, which currently has an 18 percent rate of premature-infant delivery. We've got to do better than that, which is why I'm really excited about serving as a volunteer-educator during the November March of Dimes Prematurity Awareness Month."
Like Cole, a pioneering team of Wayne State University and DMC medical researchers has been making a determined effort to reduce the city's preterm-birth rate, which is the leading cause of infant mortality.
Sonia Hassan, M.D., associate dean for Maternal, Perinatal and Child Health at WSU and a clinician at Hutzel Hospital, is one of the dedicated team of researchers who achieved a major breakthrough a few years ago - after determining via exhaustive studies that women with short cervixes may be 50 percent more likely to deliver their babies early.
The research team at Wayne State University and the National Institutes of Health's Perinatology Research Branch hosted at WSU made international headlines with that discovery and with a follow-up finding that vaginal progesterone therapy significantly reduces the rate of premature delivery in women with short cervixes.
A joint finding by the WSU School of Medicine and the Perinatology Research Branch - which is housed at Hutzel -- the progesterone breakthrough brought worldwide attention to the Detroit campaign to lower preterm-birth rates in an urban population that has long been plagued by them.
In May 2014, supported by the Detroit Mayor's Office, the same WSU/DMC team launched a massive campaign to attack the preterm-birth problem by helping to educate future mothers and helping them get the prenatal care that can greatly reduce the risk of delivering babies early. That program, called Make Your Date, is designed to help both providers (via Continuing Medical Education courses) and patients - along with health insurers - better understand how they can benefit from the breakthroughs in understanding the relationship between a short cervix and preterm birth, along with the benefits of progesterone and other effective therapies developed at WSU and the PRB. Make Your Date also provides services and connections, such as transportation assistance, participant incentives and educational sessions.
"It's very clear that Detroit's preterm-birth rate of 18 percent is a major public health problem," Dr. Hassan said. "We are excited by the implementation of the current treatments, however, our work in this area is certainly not done."
As a member of the National Prematurity Research Initiative Advisory Committee for the March of Dimes and co-chair of the Make Your Date program, Dr. Hassan explained the importance Prematurity Awareness Month plays in education on this issue.
"The local rate of preterm birth is similar to that in economically challenged countries such as Malawi," she added, "and lowering it is an essential goal if we want to improve infant mortality statistics in Detroit and elsewhere in the United States."
Dr. Hassan also noted that Detroit Mayor Michael Duggan last year "asked that we develop a preterm-birth reduction plan, and we went to work right away at creating the Make Your Date program. The bottom line on this effort is clear: It's aimed at helping mothers-to-be to connect with the prenatal care they need in order to hopefully avoid the hazards of preterm birth. That care should include appropriate ultrasound testing and diagnostics intended to identify pregnant patients with a short cervix so they can be treated with progesterone therapy where indicated. To accomplish that goal, we're very pleased to have the assistance of the March of Dimes and its Prematurity Awareness Campaign, which will continue throughout November."
Kara Hamilton-McGraw, state director of Program Services and Government Affairs for the Michigan Chapter of the March of Dimes, echoed Dr. Hassan's determination to combat preterm birth in Detroit and Michigan.
"One in 10 babies are born too soon and may face lifelong consequences due to their early birth," Hamilton-McGraw said. "The March of Dimes and our partner organizations such as the Detroit Medical Center and Wayne State University ask everyone to spread the word on the serious problem of preterm birth."
For more information on the Make Your Date program, or to support its efforts, visit https://makeyourdate.org/ or call 313-577-1000.