Mayor Horrigan and Full Term First Birthday Collective Release Five-Year Strategic Plan

City of Akron Press Release
From the desk of City of Akron Press Office
Published: 10-06-2022

Akron, Ohio, Oct. 6, 2022 - Last week, Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan hosted his sixth annual Health Equity Summit at the John S. Knight Center. The Summit brought together representatives from health care, community services, government, faith organizations, education and others to discuss the social determinants of health, health equity, racism as a public health crisis and mental health. The Summit included an update on the Full Term First Birthday (FTFB) strategic plan.

Full Term First Birthday is the infant vitality collective formed by Mayor Horrigan in 2017 to coordinate efforts to reduce infant mortality in Akron and surrounding communities. Today, the FTFB collective released its five-year strategic plan, available here.

The overarching goal of FTFB is to engage and empower the Akron community to support and promote healthy full-term pregnancies and safe sleep for babies. The strategic plan focuses on the social determinants of health and integration and coordination of agency agendas, with an emphasis on cultural competency.

"I would like to thank the many community members who provided input into this strategic plan," said Mayor Horrigan. "This plan provides a road map to the community as we strive to eliminate sleep related deaths and reduce our prematurity rates and our black infant mortality rate to 6.0 per 1000 live births by 2028. In collaboration with Summit County Public Health and the United Way of Summit and Medina Counties, I am confident that we can reach this goal by providing the supports that families need and by removing barriers which prevent them from thriving."

"Over the past five years, the Full Term First Birthday Greater Akron Collective has been able to determine that stress and systemic racism have played an enormous role in premature birth rates as well as infant mortality rates specifically in African American infants," said Tamiyka Rose, Deputy Chief of Staff and Health Equity Ambassador. "In order to address the health inequities in our communities, we must first address the racial inequities at play in the social determinants of health."

The five-year plans aims to address these inequities by comprehensively addressing not only the health of the mother and baby but also the range of personal, social, economic and environmental factors that influence health status.

Learn more at www.fulltermfirstbirthday.org.

For further information, contact:
Stephanie Marsh
Chief Communications Officer
Phone: 330-375-2754
E-mail: [email protected]