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Improving Health Outcomes for Women and Children in Ohio

Written by Sylvia Cheuy | December 4, 2014

The Turning Up the Volume on Infant Mortality Summit brought together a broad range of stakeholders from across the State of Ohio to explore how they can work differently, involve more partners, focus more resources, and create smarter policies to enhance their collective efforts to ensure better health for Ohio’s women and babies.

African-American babies born in Ohio are less likely to reach their first birthday than their counterparts in every other state. According to the latest national figures (2011), Ohio ranks 50th in the country in terms of black infant mortality. Unfortunately, white infant mortality in the state is not much better.  Ohio ranks 44th in the nation in terms of white infant mortality.

The Infant Mortality Summit is rallying stakeholders from across the State who want to do things differently, involve more partners, focus more resources, create smarter policies, and keep turning up the volume, so that Ohio can catch up to other states and achieve the Healthy People 2020 objective of an infant mortality rate of 6.0 per 1,000 live births.

Summit participants had an opportunity to explore workshops across six topic tracks: as a explore topics across the following six tracks: safe sleep; quality improvement; social determinants of health; pregnancy before and after care; mental health and addictions; and, community engagement. 

This Collective Impact: Working Differently to Accelerate Positive Change Workshop is part of the Summit’s Community Engagement track.  The workshop explored the following 4 questions: 

  1. What is Collective Impact? 
  2. Why Collective Impact works to address complex issues?
  3. Are there tools & resources that can help implement Collective Impact?
  4. What mindset shifts are needed to embrace a Collective Impact approach?

 WORKSHOP RESOURCES: