Chattanooga Mayor Andy BerkeWhat should I eat to make sure my baby is born healthy? If my baby has a fever, what medicine can he have? Why should I read to my infant? How do I take care of a daughter with asthma?
These are questions new parents ask themselves. It’s difficult to find answers or even know where to look. They are just trying to keep up with school or pick up extra shifts at work while getting ready to take on one of life’s biggest challenges: being a parent.
Parenting is difficult for everyone. I know how much my wife and I work each day to make the best choices for our daughters. We are lucky to have people in our lives that we can go to for advice, but many young families don’t have anyone to turn to when things go wrong.
And when things go wrong, they can go really wrong. Our infant mortality rate in Hamilton County is devastating. According to 2010 statistics, the rate here is more than 60 percent higher than the national average. At 9.7 per 1,000 births, we actually have a higher infant mortality rate than many countries, including Russia, Lebanon, Serbia, Ukraine — the list goes on.
On top of that, about 1,000 out of the 4,000 babies born in Hamilton County every year are at risk to not be ready for school. Single parents, low educational attainment by a parent, teen pregnancy — these factors often result in a struggling family. Chattanooga has sub-regions where over 75 percent of births are to a single mother, over half are born into poverty, and almost 20 percent are not born at a healthy weight.