Women 2 Women for Healthy Babies Campaign

Milwaukee has one of the worst infant mortality rates in the country. In an effort to reduce these rates, a community effort has been established to provide mothers with an easily accessible resource to reinforce behaviors that lead to healthier births. The project, Women 2 Women for Healthy Babies (W2W4HB), utilizes social media channels, such as YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook to spread personal messages from more than 100 women from the Milwaukee community. Short videos of their personal anecdotes and advice will be released every 3-5 days over the course of the next six months.

The challenges faced by women in our area are not isolated - the questions they have are the same questions asked by women elsewhere. Our goal is to make W2W4HB a comprehensive educational resource for women everywhere. The women in our videos discuss their experiences with issues ranging from how to handle stress, the importance of vaccinations, and seeking proper prenatal care to breast-feeding, smoking cessation, and safe sleep practices. We hope mothers will use the intimate messages we collected to really think about what's best for not only their babies, but for their own well-being.

We don't need to tell anyone that motherhood isn't easy. But we do need to tell mothers that they are not alone. It is my hope that you will consider becoming an online advocate for W2W4HB at whatever level you are comfortable. This can be a post encouraging your readers to follow Women 2 Women For Healthy Babies on Facebook or YouTube, opening discussions about the campaign, sharing our videos via your online platforms, embedding our YouTube channel into your blog, etc.

The following is the link to the campaign's introductory video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKc203yUXQk&feature=plcp

Together, we can begin to change the conversation about the best ways to prevent fetal and infant deaths.