March of Dimes Inc

March of Dimes fights for the health of all moms and babies. March of Dimes is a champion for families, focusing on communities with the greatest need and fighting for the best possible care for all moms and babies.

March of Dimes helps all women have healthy pregnancies and strong babies by providing the latest health information in English and Spanish on preconception, prenatal, postpartum and newborn care. We communicate this information through our websites, social media, community partnerships, and workplace programs.

In Arizona, more than 81,872 babies are born every year, and the work of the March of Dimes touches each one of them, whether they are born healthy, prematurely, with a birth defect or other health complications.

Each year in Arizona
• 7,578 babies are born preterm - that's 1 in 11 babies born too soon.
• 450 babies die before reaching their first birthday.
• 1,489 women did not have health insurance
• 44,242 babies were born with Medicaid as their primary source of payment at birth
• 373 babies were born in areas defined as maternity care deserts

March of Dimes is a powerful voice for the needs of pregnant women, infants, children and families in Arizona. In 2019, March of Dimes secured four legislative wins by leading efforts to address opioid-related deaths by creating an Opioid Action Plan to ensure increased treatment and education options for pregnant and postpartum women, supporting legislation to create guidelines and training requirements for community health workers, defeating attempts to eliminate licensing requirements for mental health providers, and protecting maternal and child health programs from efforts to reduce their funding.

In 2019, March of Dimes Arizona continued to collaborate with and unite other maternal child health leaders to promote a continuing state-wide collaboration. These efforts include, but are not limited to: improving infant and maternal mortality and morbidity surveillance, supporting perinatal/neonatal levels of care, addressing perinatal substance use and neonatal abstinence syndrome, increasing utilization of progesterone shots (17P) to prevent prematurity, decreasing sudden unexpected infant deaths, and expanding access to long-acting reversible contraceptives.

March of Dimes helps families when a pregnancy doesn't go according to plan. In 2018, March of Dimes launched the My NICU BabyTM app, providing free, easy to use information for all NICU families. Through the online Share Your Story® site and Facebook mentoring program, we bring together families impacted by the biggest health threats to mom and baby. We also educate families and staff and improve the NICU experience through our NICU Family Support® program in Phoenix and our Training Institute for health care professionals.