About Cradle Kalamazoo

Cradle Kalamazoo understands that pregnancy and raising children can be difficult. It takes a village to raise a child. Cradle Kalamazoo is coordinating care and services offered by Family Support Programs that are dedicated to providing support services for pregnant/expectant mothers and infants. These programs offer resources for parents and infants both inside and outside the home. Our Family Support Programs are family-focused and work with all members of a family to ensure mothers have a healthy pregnancy and infants have a healthy start in life.

Families who participate in home visiting programs benefit from improved maternal, infant, and child health. Services promote positive parenting techniques, healthy child development, and school readiness. Home Visitors provide referrals to other support services for families in need. Family Support Programs work together to ensure that you are receiving the best services possible and the concerns you identify together are resolved.

For more information or to enroll in a program, please contact (269) 366-6201 or visit our resources page.

Kalamazoo County Health and Community Services and Western Michigan University Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine are leading Kalamazoo’s Fetal-Infant Mortality Review (FIMR). FIMR is conducted monthly in order to understand and improve the factors that contribute to infant death in our community.

For more information visit the Kalamazoo County Health and Community Services’ FIMR page. 

Cradle Kalamazoo believes that health equity is a key component needed by organizations to effectively provide services to pregnant/expectant mothers, infants, and their families. Health Equity is the state in which everyone, regardless of identity (e.g., race, class, gender identity), has the opportunity to attain full health and no one is disadvantaged from achieving this. Health Equity is accomplished when institutions across sectors commit to becoming anti-racist organizations and remove obstacles to health — such as discrimination, poverty, deep imbalances in power, wealth, and resources — and their consequences, including racial disparities in infant mortality and birth outcomes. For more information on health equity, visit the Healthy People 2030 site. 

Cradle Kalamazoo is striving towards educating community members and creating policies that empower individuals, programs, and institutions to become more culturally competent. Our partners learn about the history and environment that have contributed to the high racial disparities in infant death. They are also encouraged to make changes within their institutions that can facilitate understanding, communication, and access to services for mothers, expectant women, and their families. By bridging the cultural norms of service providers and clients/patients, we as a community will help reduce infant deaths.

For health equity resources, visit our resources page. 

Cradle Kalamazoo is providing the community with Reproductive Health Education to promote spacing between births and healthy planned pregnancies. Unplanned and rapid repeat pregnancies can lead to infant death. Rapid repeat pregnancies can result in babies that are too small and/or born too soon. Through education, families can better plan for their pregnancies. Our approach is to be respectful of everyone’s religious and cultural beliefs, preferences, privacy, and personal circumstances.

To learn more about Reproductive Health Education visit our resources page. 

Through continuous data collection and evaluation of key indicators by Cradle Kalamazoo partners, together we strive to identify and assist at risk pregnancies and infants in Kalamazoo County. This information will guide us in updating and evolving programs to better serve our community.

Here is some of the research Cradle Kalamazoo is using to support our work —

Cathy Kothari, PhD with the support of Kalamazoo County Healthy Babies Healthy Start, performed an Infant Mortality Trend Analysis. In this study, Dr. Kothari found:

• In Kalamazoo, babies of color are 4x more likely to die before their first birthday than their white neighbors.
• Babies of color are affected across income. Babies of color from higher income families are twice as likely to die before their first birthday than their lower income white neighbors.
• Although infant mortality is high among all infants of color, the reasons infants die varies based on their family’s income. Many lower-income infants of color are dying from sleep-related causes and higher income infants of color are dying largely due to prematurity.
• The race of the infant affects infant mortality risk more than their family’s socioeconomic status.
• Most infant deaths are preventable. Through specialized interventions, racial disparities in infant death can be reduced and eventually eliminated.

Cradle Kalamazoo is working to ensure that every baby has a safe sleep environment. Unsafe sleep environments are a leading cause of infant death and are completely preventable. Sleep Safe is a nationally recognized program to help protect your baby from sudden unexpected infant death syndrome (also called SUIDS), suffocation, and other sleeping related dangers.

We recognize the importance of culture and individual preferences for child bearing and child rearing. We also recognize that safe sleep education is an on-going conversation and not a lecture. Cradle Kalamazoo uses innovative ways to communicate with parents, grand parents, caregivers, health care providers, child care providers and everyone helping with caring for a baby.

For tools and to learn more, visit the “Safe Sleep” section of our resources page. 

Cradle Kalamazoo would not have been possible without the dedication and support of many individuals and the following organizations

• Ascension Borgess Health
• Bronson Healthcare
• Eliminating Racism Creating/Celebrating Equity (ERACCE)
• Elizabeth Upjohn Community Healing Center
• Family Health Center
• Fatherhood Network
• Goodwill Industries of Southwest Michigan
• Integrated Services of Kalamazoo
• Interfaith Strategy for Advocacy and Action in the Community (ISAAC)
• Kalamazoo Community Foundation
• Kalamazoo County Government
  • Kalamazoo County Comission
  • Kalamazoo County Health & Community Services
• Kalamazoo Promise
• Kalamazoo Regional Educational Services Agency (KRESA)
• NAACP – Metropolitan Kalamazoo Branch
• Northside Ministerial Alliance
• Open Doors Kalamazoo
• Planned Parenthood of Michigan
• Rootead
• Twenty Hands
• United Healthcare Community Plan
• United Way of the Battle Creek and Kalamazoo Region
• Western Michigan University Department of Psychology
• Western Michigan University Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine
• YWCA Kalamazoo

Thank you to our funders! Without them, the work of Cradle Kalamazoo wouldn’t be possible.

• Kalamazoo Community Foundation
• Stryker Johnston Foundation
• United Way of South Central Michigan