Rae Bond

When she found out she was pregnant at age 17, Kyndra Bell thought of her teenage classmates who already had children and those who felt too "ashamed" to seek out the proper prenatal care.

Instead, she became determined to take care of her baby.

"I said, 'It's not about myself no more,'" she said. "I took my prenatal vitamins every day. I tried to eat the right foods, and I walked."

She also enrolled in a baby basics class at the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Health Department, where a health educator introduced her to a high-risk-pregnancy obstetrician and provided some extra education.

"It was a big help," Kyndra said. "The nurses up there, they were always able to put a smile on my face."

Her baby ShyNella is now almost 2 months old and healthy after recovering from surgery to repair a congenital defect, she said.

Hamilton County is one of the worst counties in the state in terms of infant mortality, but public health advocates said at a news briefing Tuesday that local initiatives -- such as having the health educators at the health department -- will begin to turn those numbers around.

With 9.7 deaths per 1,000 births, Hamilton County has the second-worst infant death rate of all Tennessee counties, second only to Shelby County.

"To decrease these rates it takes more than just one or two groups working on this," local health department administrator Becky Barnes said at the event. "The solutions are community solutions. They have to be community identified, community driven, community implemented."

Thanks to increased state funding, a clinic run by the University of Tennessee College of Medicine in Chattanooga's obstetrics-gynecology department has been able to reach out to more low-income patients, resulting in a 20 to 35 percent increase in patient visits, said Dr. Daniel Schubert, director of gynecology and ambulatory care.

The department also is partnering with the Southside and Dodson Avenue Community Health Centers to provide significantly expanded OB-GYN coverage for the centers' patients, said Bill Hicks, executive director of the centers, which receive federal funding to treat underserved and low-income populations.

La Paz de Dios' Health Promoters program is focusing on reaching out to local pregnant Hispanic women, while Girls, Inc. in Chattanooga is engaging local teenagers in a peer education campaign in which the teens write and create public service announcements about infant mortality.

Girls Inc. program participant Kermisha Tate, 17, a senior at Boyd-Buchanan School, said the area's dismal infant mortality rates undermine Chattanooga's many positive attributes.

"Chattanooga has so much potential ... but it's not going to be one of the great cities in Tennessee if our babies keep dying," she said.

CORE LEADERSHIP

The Hamilton County Core Leadership Group, which is coordinating and supporting the efforts of several community-based programs, was created in 2007 by Gov. Phil Bredesen's Office of Children's Care Coordination to reduce the county's infant mortality rate. Similar programs were implemented in Shelby and Davidson counties.