Our Approach to Infant Mortality in St. Louis

The Collective Impact Model

FLOURISH St. Louis is a collective impact initiative aimed at making St. Louis a place where healthy babies and families flourish. This means we’re coming together as a community in new ways because an issue this complex can’t be solved by a single organization. Together, we are:

• Reviewing data and facilitating conversations to identify gaps that exist for families.
• Empowering the community to voice its needs and share ideas for solutions to address infant mortality.
• Establishing a common agenda for our region to align and elevate efforts for broader impact.
• Building consensus to define shared goals as a region, so we can all coordinate our efforts to reduce infant mortality in St. Louis.
• Developing a system to measure the region’s progress as a whole, so we can make continuous improvements in eliminating racial disparities in infant mortality.

Generate Health, a nonprofit organization focused on advancing racial equity in pregnancy outcomes, family well-being, and community health, serves as the backbone for FLOURISH. 

Other Key Frameworks

FLOURISH’s work also is inspired by the following frameworks and organizations: 

• Racial Equity: The racial disparity in health and in birth outcomes in the St. Louis region is staggering. As a result, FLOURISH follows the racial equity framework established by Forward Through Ferguson as the core of its approach to solving St. Louis’ infant mortality crisis. The Forward Through Ferguson initiative was born following the tragic death of Michael Brown in 2014, which brought to light the deep racial inequities in St. Louis.  

• Theory of Change: In partnership with our funder, Missouri Foundation for Health (MFH), FLOURISH developed a Theory of Change to guide our work. This outlines the early changes, long-term systems changes and health impacts we hope to see and helps us enact the right strategies to achieve those.  

• Centering Community Approach: FLOURISH’s approach is to center community members impacted by infant mortality and the systemic racism that creates inequities for Black families. To ensure that community can lead this work, we provide them with stipends, childcare, meals and transportation to remove barriers to participation. We also take a backseat role, and work at the pace of community to accomplish our work. 
• Other Inspirations: Peer organizations addressing infant mortality in other regions — including Celebrate One in Columbus, Ohio; Cradle Cincinnati in Ohio; and B’More for Healthy Babies in Maryland — inspired FLOURISH’s work. We also looked to local community organizers and the California Endowment for how to create systems change through community-led work.