COLUMBUS, Ohio — It's a personal and heartfelt story of starting a program to help address maternal and infant health disparities between predominately black and white neighborhoods in Columbus.
"Saving Babies: The Moms2B Story" was written by Dr. Patricia T. Gabbe, the founder of the program more than a decade ago.
Moms2B was an idea born from thinking of the moms and the babies behind the numbers.
"Moms2B started in September 2010. And this was after I had done a lot of reading and studying the infant mortality rates in Ohio and specifically here in Columbus and I was shocked that overall we had a high rate. But especially for Black babies,” said Dr. Patricia Gabbe.
Dr. Patricia Gabbe, a pediatrician, wanted to help every child survive their first year of life while also helping mothers with what they needed: Food, transportation, medical care and a safe and affordable place to call home.
She started Moms2B in the basement of her church. Their early efforts were focused in Weinland Park, where moms could come together for support and education about safe sleep, stress management, nutrition and more.
“We started there because the infant mortality rate was about 15 per thousand. Fifteen infants, and most of those were black, died per thousand live births in one year. So we started there and when we measured the outcomes five years later, we found that we had reduced infant mortality five-fold,” she explained.
Today, they offer a mix of virtual and in-person programs at several locations in low-income neighborhoods in and around Columbus. They've expanded to Dayton as well. In Memphis, Tennessee they are modeling a new program there after Moms2B.
In 2015 they also started serving dads.
Gabbe said more needs to be done and that this needs to be a statewide program. She hopes by sharing her passion through her own words, it will inspire others to join her mission for positive change.
“I always admired these moms who were so caring and so loving of their babies and then to read the data and see so many were dying before they reached their first birthday, I felt it was such an injustice and that there were so many things that we could do if we really focused on it ."
In the book, you'll find letters of gratitude. One mother writes, "You all were my support. my everything at a time when I needed it."
“I keep in touch with some of our early moms,” Gabbe said. “We still keep in touch and they are so grateful because we inspired them to do more because we knew they could."
You can find out more information about Moms2B here.
To order a copy of Saving Babies: The Moms2B Story, please visit: https://osu.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_06WmzEpy5sBhDcW