Our Health Matters: Achieving Maternal and Child Health Equity

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Abstract In the United States, African American mothers and infants have the most adverse birth outcomes compared to other racial/ethnic groups. The vision of our Achieving Maternal and Child Health Equity Conference- Our Health Matters- is to achieve health equity by addressing the factors that impact maternal and child health disparities. The Achieving Maternal Child Health Equity conference is in line with the mission and activities of the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities to improve minority health and eliminate health disparities by translating and disseminating research findings and information, providing an education and training opportunity to a diverse audience, and by fostering collaborative efforts and partnerships across disciplines and professions that bring together the community, businesses, nonprofit agencies, political leaders, researchers and academicians to work toward the goal of eliminating health disparities among minority mothers, children and infants. This conference will be the third maternal child health conference held in Tallahassee, Florida. Through collaborative community and academic conference programing, planning, and participation, we aim to promote advocacy and education, and strategize about policy implications; identify priorities to promote health equity in the area of maternal and child health; and, discuss culturally appropriate mechanisms useful to support maternal child health equity at the point of provider or other services. The outcomes of our conference April 2015 (over 150 people attended), demonstrated this as an effective forum to increase knowledge and awareness related to structured systems of inequity and other factors that impact maternal and child health across the life course. Paired sample t-tests showed there was a statistically significant change in mean pre- conference vs. post-conference responses for all learning objectives. There is an urgent need to address poor birth outcomes for African Americans, especially black infant mortality, a public health problem that has persisted despite advances in medicine, in a way that allows scientific evidence to inform clinical practice, further research, and health policy. Developing innovative strategies that are integrated, patient-centered and community-based and encompass a life course perspective to address this inequity are needed. Through realization of the aims of this conference, and capitalizing on the momentum and knowledge exchange of the previous Maternal and Child Health Equity conferences, and community-based participatory research completed in Leon and Gadsden counties, this conference will serve as a platform to improve maternal and child health in our local counties and the state of Florida.