Of the 10,000 babies, on average, born in the city annually, roughly 100 die before celebrating that milestone, according to the state Department of Health Services, the city and Ascension Wisconsin.
That’s a dire statistic that Julia Means has been working to change for nearly 20 years.
Means, a community health nurse with Ascension Wisconsin, remembers attending a public health conference in Milwaukee in 2004. She recalls hearing a speaker say that a child born in a third world country had a better chance of reaching its first birthday than a child born in Milwaukee.
“I went home and I couldn’t sleep,” said Means, who has worked for Ascension since 1986. “African American babies were dying. I knew we had to put a stop to it.”
That same year, she started the Blanket of Love program.