Preventing Preterm Birth Is Long Overdue

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

I was born on December 25th, more than a month before expected, as a surprise “Christmas present” for my family. Like many preterm babies, I was small and had trouble breathing on my own. But unlike most, I had access to expensive medical technologies, like oxygen and breathing machines—and highly trained caregivers. Half of all births globally still occur without skilled medical care. Fortunately, after a week of close supervision and many prayers, I went home to my parents healthy.

I was lucky. The statistics for preterm birth are staggering. It is the leading cause of death for newborns, taking the lives of 1 million babies every year. And it affects rich and poor countries alike—the rates of preterm birth in the U.S. are similar to those of Sub-Saharan Africa. This impact can also be measured in financial terms. In the U.S. alone, the cost of short-term healthcare for preterm infants annually exceeds $25 billion.

Despite this devastating toll, the medical research community has largely neglected preterm birth. Instead, we have embraced the status quo: caring for preterm infants with costly medicines and machines, while doing very little for prevention. So instead of a robust pipeline of bold solutions and new ideas, such as those we witness in cancer or immunization, we settle for small improvements with limited impact. Even if we fully implemented proven prevention measures such as progesterone treatment and smoking cessation, we would alleviate only about 15 percent of cases.

We can do better than this. That’s why I’m excited that the Gates Foundation is teaming up with the Global Alliance to Prevent Prematurity and Stillbirth (GAPPS) to engage the world’s best scientists in this effort. The initiative, Preventing Preterm Birth, is part of the Grand Challenges in Global Health program, which brings together diverse groups of researchers and partners to find innovations that overcome today’s greatest health and development challenges. We are applying the Grand Challenges model to family health and expanding on the number of groundbreaking ideas that can help women and children live more prosperous and healthy lives.

Skeptics say that preterm birth is too complex, or an unfortunate but natural consequence of human reproduction. To me, this is equivalent to the old beliefs that malaria was caused by “bad air”, or that the bubonic plague resulted from an unfortunate alignment of the planets. There will be obstacles and wrong-turns to be sure. But, we cannot let that stop us from asking the right questions and seeking bold answers. With application of new scientific tools, we can develop a new generation of solutions—and inspire a new generation of scientists—to help give everyone a healthy start to life.

Andrew Serazin

High Scope Curriculum

Blog by Ashley Gardner, Director of High Scope Curriculum and Home Visits at YMCA Judson Preschool:

Since implementing the High/Scope Curriculum in September of 2010, we have seen a marked difference in our classroom environment. Three things stand out to me as having changed the most over the past year. First, our children have become much more independent. Through High/Scope, they are in control of the time they spend in the classroom. Each morning during Planning Time, the children have the opportunity to choose what area they want to work in, who they want to work with, and what they want to do. The children are much more excited about Work Time (free play in centers), because they are free to move around the classroom as they want to. Their play has become more imaginative and creative, because there are no limits to where they can play, who they can play with, and how they can use the materials. Second, the interactions between the children have become much more positive. High/Scope teaches children how to problem-solve. This system has proved invaluable in our classroom. Though many of our children are not able to problem-solve on their own, they eagerly bring their disputes to a teacher who walks them through the problem-solving process and offer solutions. We have seen much less fighting and arguing, and the children have become more confident in their ability to find their own resolutions to problems. Finally, our parents are much more engaged in the classroom. Home visits have opened up many wonderful doors of communication with parents who may not have chosen to be quite as involved before. Our parents have learned about the High/Scope curriculum and are using problem-solving at home, giving their children more choices, and asking more questions about what their child did during the day.

We are excited to be in another school year using High/Scope.

Building the Perfect Sand Castle

This summer the Lewis’s headed to the beach for a family reunion weekend. As we settled in on the shoreline, the boys began the annual task of constructing the perfect sandcastle. This was no ordinary castle, it also had to include a massive wall and moat to keep the water out. In years past, we all just dove into the work, and after hours of digging, we got up sunburned and exhausted, and realized that the water was moving in faster than we could prepare for it.

This year, we decided to make a plan. Two of my nephews drew out the design. I was in charge of digging the trench. My niece helped her cousins build the walls. My sister in law helped fortify all the work. Everyone got on their hands and knees, and for nearly an hour, 10 adults and children of all ages dug sand out of trenches, built walls, and formed the castle. We all had different roles, working to reach the same goal: building the perfect sandcastle.

Over the past year, over 50 community partners, including 100 community volunteers have taken a similar approach to ensure we have a plan to help every child enter school ready to learn. With partners as diverse as School District trustees, Head Start leaders, business owners, retired teachers, faith based child care providers, city and county elected officials, and neighborhood leaders, we set about creating the School Readiness Roadmap.

We brought each of our shovels and sand buckets to the table and developed a plan. With leadership support from the United Way of Greenville’s School Readiness Council and Greenville First Steps, the Greenville community worked to create a School Readiness Roadmap, a plan that helps ensure every child has the opportunity to enter school ready to learn.

The biggest achievement was the acknowledgement that there isn’t ONE answer: there is no magic bullet. There is not a program or service that fits the needs of every child in our community. Children, families, community leaders need different supports to ensure every family is reached. We need parenting program, technical assistance and training for child care providers and physicians, community awareness campaigns, and we need everyone speaking the same message: Kids Drive Our Future.

As the finishing touches are being applied, we are able to step back and see a comprehensive plan that proposes that a child is most likely to be “ready” when he/she is provided with supportive parents, well trained educators, and a community that understands that nothing is more important to Greenville’s prosperity than ensuring every child enter school ready to learn.

The roadmap should be launched in December. After that comes the time for each of us to roll up our sleeves and get to work: building a community where every child enters school ready to learn. Don’t you want to get involved?

Derek Lewis
Executive Director

New Parent Resource for Greenville County

Greenville First Steps, in partnership with our local community partners including the United Way of Greenville County, and with private funding from local foundations and individual donations, is excited to launch our first version of the Greenville Online Parent Resource Portal. Visit the portal here.

The purpose of the portal is to provide a one-stop opportunity for parents, child care providers, and community members to learn about services, activities, and resources available for supporting our youngest learners.

The site will provide linkages to agency services, a community forum for discussion, blogs, and links to other online resources. You should check back often, as we will be adding new components on a weekly basis. This week, we added a parent newsletter feature. By entering your child’s zip code and birthday, you can receive a weekly email that provides developmental screening and milestones updates for your child, age appropriate activities for families, updates on news and events. The newsletter is free, and you can sign up for a different newsletter for each child!

We will be adding components of the portal as funding is available, including a searchable, interactive database of childcare providers, online trainings, and videos and interactive content on how to choose the best child care center for your family’s needs.

What content, activities, projects would you like to see on the portal? Click here to let us know on our new facebook page. And don’t forget to like us for updates.

Derek Lewis, Greenville First Steps Executive Director