For Immediate Release:
6/20/2023 4:03 pm
Seeking to address a public health need voiced by the community, the Worcester Division of Public Health (WDPH) officially launched a new Maternal & Child Health office under the Community Health team in January 2023, led by Emile Somda, M.D. One of the major goals of the team is to create a centralized data source related to maternal and child health that can be used by municipalities and community partners to identify and address critical issues.
Although elements of maternal and child health work previously existed within WDPH, including the Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health (REACH) breastfeeding and Community Health tobacco and substance use prevention programs, the new team is designed to align the Division’s expertise and resources and bring them to bear on maternal and child health challenges.
“This new team is an opportunity to rethink how community health work is organized; it will allow our expertise and work in areas of community need to drive our grants, rather than grants driving our work. It also brings us more in line with core public health areas at the state and national levels,” said Deputy Commissioner of Health & Human Services and former Acting Director of Public Health Zach Dyer, Ph.D.
In addition to building on the work being done within WDPH, the Maternal & Child Health team will incorporate data being collected by community partners, such as the Worcester Healthy Baby Collaborative (WHBC) and Together for Kids Coalition. Additional data will be captured in upcoming Community Health Assessments, but the team’s priority is to facilitate a City-wide Fetal and Infant Mortality Review (FIMR), with the eventual aim to expand it to the other CMRPHA towns.
The ultimate goal of the FIMR is to determine causes of fetal and infant mortality and propose policies and other interventions to prevent them. Fetal mortality refers to adverse pregnancies, and infant mortality is a death that occurs between birth and just before a child’s first birthday.
Currently, the Maternal & Child Health team is developing an FIMR committee and navigating existing data collection frameworks. Eventually, a formal review process will be put in place, and a case review team and community action team will collect quantitative and qualitative data to inform how to most effectively address causes of mortality.
“Eventually, we want to improve systems and establish preventative supports to assist new parents and their children. At the moment, we are taking small, careful steps to create an effective process as we build the team and ensure the right voices are at the table. Our community partners have been very welcoming and eager to work with us,” said Somda.
One of those community partners is the WHBC, which presented fetal and infant mortality data collected to date, including periods of risk and racial disparities, to the Worcester Board of Health at its April 2023 meeting. Somda said that the FIMR’s data will include racial disparities that will inform tailored intervention and advocacy design. There is also a concerted effort to establish a diverse committee to drive the FIMR forward.
Before joining WDPH in a full-time capacity, Somda served there as an epidemiology intern as part of his Master of Public Health candidacy at University of Massachusetts Amherst, which he is on track to complete this May. Somda previously graduated from medical school in Burkina Faso, where he worked in pediatrics and coordinated both a new mother breastfeeding committee and an infectious disease prevention committee.
“Emile has hit the ground running, and he has been able to accelerate the new team’s work with his extensive medical background and having previously worked with mothers as a physician. He’s a perfect fit to lead this work moving forward,” said Chief of Community Health Brendan Keenan, Ed.D.
Somda is joined by Maternal & Child Health Specialist Michelle Horne, who has an extensive background in early childhood (including infant) development evaluation and intervention.
