First Year Cleveland

Sitting in the small midwifery office at Neighborhood Family Practice on the West Side of Cleveland, midwife Katy Maistros discusses the mothers she’s helped give birth — many of them refugees from different parts of the world. "We don’t like to say we deliver babies, because women deliver their own babies … but we catch them," Maistros said. Most recently, she’s noticed high levels of stress in her Hispanic patients. Many fled gang violence or poverty in Latin America, only to face immigration and deportation fears once they arrived in the U.S.

First Year Cleveland, a group working to reduce infant mortality in Cuyahoga County, reports preliminary data for 2018 shows the rate of black infants dying before their first birthday is at its lowest in five years, and white infant mortality is the second lowest Cuyahoga County has seen in the same time period. However, the Hispanic infant mortality rate dramatically increased to the highest rate the county has experienced in those same five years, according to Richard Stacklin of the Cuyahoga County Board of Health.