March of Dimes

Community collaboration - see schedule ocommunity collaborationnicu family supportpregnancies don't always go as expected. That's why nicu family support was offered in more than 70 nicu sites across the us to over 50,000 families, providing family education, staff training on patient-centered care, and an improved patient experience with the support of March of Dimes experts. We also provided each site with five new elearning courses, including one new topic focused on supporting nicu moms through the fourth trimester. Mobile health centerstoo many pregnant people don't have access to care. Nearly 2,000 patients received quality perinatal healthcare through over 4,000 patient visits in mom & baby mobile health centers in three sites. Our health centers aim to improve birth outcomes by addressing access issues and social drivers of health, while providing wraparound clinical and community services (e.g. Housing, nutrition).mom and baby action network m-bantogether we rallied over 500 active participants within our mom and baby action network (m-ban), a consortium of over 400 national, state, and local partners dedicated to addressing inequities in maternal and infant health through five shared strategies.collective impactover 140 local organizations reached nearly 6,000 people through collective impact (ci), a model for solving complex social problems. These ci activities, meetings, and conferences across the country focus efforts on key drivers and root causes of infant mortality, preterm birth, maternal mortality, and severe maternal morbidity.march for babies and special eventsour flagship fundraising event, March for babies, brought together more than 45,000 participants from across the country to raise $26 million, and our special events raised more than $20 million to support the March of Dimes mission.

Programs, education, and advocacy - see schedule o education and advocacyprofessional trainingour professional education team ignited necessary change by delivering 11,626 implicit bias training seats to healthcare professionals (including 652 students), with 98% confirming the training met its objectives and 93% saying it will benefit their practice. They also delivered 12,604 seats of other professional education trainings. With cdc funding, over 1,000 healthcare professionals nationwide received free beyond labels training on reducing stigma related to maternal mental health and substance use disorder. This contributed to training 24,230 healthcare professionals in 2023.supportive pregnancy careprenatal care, education, and social support are pregnancy essentials and we continued bringing them where they were most needed with supportive pregnancy care, adding nine new sites for a total of 44 active group prenatal care programs across the country. Forty-eight professionals were trained at five of the new sites in 2023, with additional trainings and new sites scheduled to onboard in 2024.it starts with momour consumer education platform, it starts with mom, expanded its reach to help even more women in need, with publications available in both spanish and english. The it starts with mom live webinars received over 778,000 viewsa 200% increase from 2022. Itstartswithmom.org also received over 11,300 visits.our reportsas the leading nonprofit voice in maternal and infant health, our reports highlight key markers to convey the reality of the unacceptable outcomes we see in this country. The 2023 March of Dimes report card showed the us preterm birth rate remains at a decade-long high, earning the nation a d+ grade for the second consecutive year. It received more than 450 media placements resulting in nearly 2.1 billion media impressions and an increase in web traffic volume. One factor in the maternal and infant health crisis is that over 5.6 million women of childbearing age in the us live in counties with limited or no access to maternity care. The first publication of our where you live matters: maternity care deserts and the crisis of access report provided a deeper look at access to maternity care in all 50 states, puerto rico, and Washington, dc, resulting in 182,054 page views and securing 2,879 media placements, leading to 3.5 billion impressions.legislative winsthroughout the year we advocated for families through campaigns like March for change, with 74 state bills signed into law. A major policy win that resulted from our lobbying was the extension of medicaid postpartum coverage to 12 months in 47 states and Washington, dc.at the federal level, we successfully lead efforts toward the strong bipartisan passage of our top legislative priorities the preemie reauthorization act and the preventing maternal deaths reauthorization act. We also advocated for critical legislation on stillbirth prevention the maternal and child health stillbirth prevention act and the shine for autumn act.advocacy networkour advocacy network is an essential tool for everyone to use their voice to help us fight for families. Through the network, advocates receive action alerts and up-to-date information on laws and policies that will help in their communities. In 2023, we increased the network by nearly 8% with 46,899 advocates and 120,000 total actions taken, with 14,413 advocates who contacted officials and 119,317 total actions taken.

Research - see schedule oresearchwith 1 in 10 babies born too soon each year and two women dying from pregnancy and childbirth complications every day, we continued to fund research to determine the causes and preventions of preterm birth and help more moms have healthy, full-term pregnanciesbreakthroughsgroundbre... strides were made in 2023 at our five prematurity research centers (prcs), including the creation of predictive models for assessing the risk of preterm birth, preeclampsia, and other complications with unparalleled accuracy. Additionally, promising initial trials began for a microbiota supplement tailored for individuals at high risk of preterm birth. Our teams have also undertaken the development of a comprehensive database to illuminate the intricate connections between environmental exposures and recurrent pregnancy loss and miscarriage, paving the way for targeted interventions and improved maternal and infant health outcomes.grants and awardswe support some of the brightest doctors, scientists, academics, and computational experts in the world through our four research grants and two career awards. Last year, we awarded $5.3 million to individuals pursuing transformative translational discoveries aimed at drastically improving the health of pregnant people and their babies.new research center at university of pennsylvanialongstanding racial disparities make the us among the most dangerous developed nations for childbirthwhich is why we launched our research center for advancing maternal health equity, based at the university of Pennsylvania, to help close the health equity gap and improve birth outcomes.podcastwe launched our first ever research-based podcast, modcast, which brings scientists, doctors, donors, and families behind the laboratory doors for a fascinating look into the science that is changing, study by study, the story of moms and babies in the us. It had 1,000 downloads in the first six months, and was ranked in the top 100 life science podcasts worldwide.innovation fundwe continued our commitment to fight for families with the March of Dimes innovation fund, a venture philanthropy initiative to invest donated funds in early-stage companies working to address the most pressing maternal and infant health challenges. Since launching, we've raised $6.75 million for the fund and engaged with a total of 320 companies of interest. We evaluated a number of organizations last year and chose two to invest in, bringing our total to three portfolio companies.