Wisconsin Earns a C on March of Dimes National Report Card

Friday, December 9th, 2022 -- 11:01 AM

(By Gaby Vinick, Wisconsin Public Radio) -Racial and ethnic disparities in maternal and infant health outcomes are showing no signs of improvement in Wisconsin, according to a national report card by the nonprofit March of Dimes. 

According to Gaby Vinick with Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin earned a C overall. The state's preterm birth rate rose over the last decade to 10 percent. Despite that increase, Wisconsin is doing slightly better than the national average of 10.5 percent.

Yet that advantage disappears when looking at areas of the state with higher numbers of marginalized residents. In those communities, health outcomes for expectant mothers and babies trail far behind the state and national averages. Babies born prematurely arrive before 37 weeks of pregnancy.

"We don't want to be reactive to a health crisis. We want to be proactive and say, 'OK, we're seeing this kind of uptick slowly creeping in, how can we stop this from becoming a statewide F?" said Emily Kittell, the maternal and infant health initiatives manager at March of Dimes, Wisconsin.

The state's largest city is already there. Milwaukee received an F on its report card for its above-average 12.2 percent preterm birth rate. The county earned a D- at 11.3 percent.

"We as a state need to say, 'This is not okay for our moms, for our babies, and we can do better. And we have to do better,'" said Dr. Nathan Lepp, an associate clinical professor of neonatology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

While Dane, Outagamie and Milwaukee counties improved their preterm birth rates from last year, Brown, Racine and Waukesha counties fared worse.  Emmanuel Ngui, a UW-Milwaukee associate professor in Community & Behavioral Health Promotion, said those differences are concentrated in poorer, under-resourced communities with large minority populations.

He described the report as "a wake-up call," but said "for those of us who are in the perinatal health area, it's not new." Menominee, for example, has an American Indian and Alaska Native population of 80.8 percent.

Milwaukee's Black population is about 27.6 percent. Both counties are among the most vulnerable in the state where mothers are likely to experience poor pregnancy outcomes, according to the March of Dimes "maternal vulnerability index." 

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