March of Dimes Prematurity Campaign Collaborative

Collaborative to Place Equity at Forefront of Work

The full Prematurity Campaign Collaborative launched on March 20 with a virtual meeting attended by more than 200 people. Thank you to the many Collaborative participants and organizations who helped to spread the word and recruit new participants! As a result of your efforts, more than 150 new people joined the prematurityprevention.org/collaborative website or signed up for a workgroup, including 45 new participants in the Health Equity Workgroup. We continue to invite new participants to the full Collaborative and all Workgroups.

The Health Equity Workgroup is leading the effort to place equity at the forefront of the Collaborative. At their last meeting on April 12, 58 Workgroup participants discussed plans for the following three projects. Subgroups will be established for each of these items.

• A scientific consensus statement recognizing the contributions of many scientific disciplines to equity;
• Guiding principles on how the entire Collaborative and other organizations can incorporate equity into their work;
• A glossary of language to help Collaborative members open up discussions about equity to a broad audience.

The next Workgroup virtual meeting will be held in June. If you have an interest in addressing systemic injustices and the social determinants of health and how these affect birth outcomes, we invite you to join the Health Equity Workgroup. You may sign up here.