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Florida gets an “F” on premature birth report card

Posted Nov 18, 2009 by Beth Gaddis

Updated Nov 19, 2009 at 05:19 AM

Having a baby early for medical reasons is necessary.  Having a baby early because it’s more convenient for your mom to come visit is not.

Fewer elective caesarian sections and fewer early inductions are two ways Florida could stop getting an “F” when it comes to babies’ health, one organization says.

The March of Dimes released its second annual Premature Birth Report Card on Tuesday.  In it, Florida and 17 other states as well as Puerto Rico got the lowest grade possible for percentage of early deliveries.

“In Florida, the prematurity rate is 13.8 percent for the third year,” said Dr. Lewis Rubin, the Chief of Neonatology at Tampa General Hospital and University of South Florida Health.  Rubin is the state spokesman for the March of Dimes organization and studies the effects of stress on the fetus and other factors as the Pamela S. and Leslie M. Muma Endowed Chair in Neonatology at the University of South Florida.

The national rate of premature births was 12.7 percent, statistics through 2007 show. The March of Dimes wants to get that number down to 7.6 percent.  They’re focusing on three main contributors to early births: lack of insurance, smoking and choosing to have babies before 39 weeks gestation.

“During the last 25 years, there’s been a 36 percent increase in these late preterm births and that accounts for most of the increase in the premature births overall,” Rubin said. “If we can control late preterm births, that would go a long way to helping the baby, the family and society.”

Funding smoking cessation programs is another way to ensure healthier pregnancies and infants, Rubin said. The Centers for Disease Control said there was a slight uptick in the number of women of child-bearing age in Florida who smoked several times a week, from 19.7 percent in 2007 to 19.8 percent in 2008. 

“Either smoking or passive smoking - inhaling second-hand smoke - both contribute to prematurity and low birth rate,” Rubin said.

The new March of Dimes report card found the number of uninsured women in Florida remained 27 percent, citing census information collected from 2006 to 2008 and then again from 2007 to 2009.  With the recession, those numbers could climb.

“It is a major concern,” Rubin said. 

In the United States, more than 540,000 babies are born early each year, the March of Dimes organization said.  Medical care is expensive; the Institute of Medicine found problems resulting from preterm births in the United States cost more than $26 billion each year.

In the March of Dimes report card, no state got an “A” and only Vermont got a “B.”  Overall, the nation scored a “D.” 

“It’s grim, but it’s also a call to action,” Rubin said.

Dr. John Curran at the University of South Florida agrees. “Literally every week a baby is able to grow within their mother’s belly and not be delivered early, the more the baby’s brain is able to grow and develop, preventing unnecessary health problems at birth and potential future learning problems.”

Read the report.
See how other states did.