Riley Children's Foundation

The Need

600 babies in Indiana die before their first birthday each year.
Indiana's infant mortality rate is among the highest in the nation.
Many of these deaths are preventable. We cannot wait to act when babies' lives are at stake.

Your Impact

Your gifts are helping Riley hire up to 12 maternal-fetal medicine specialists to address a shortage of care for mothers with high-risk pregnancies.
Gifts are also helping create a new Riley Fetal Center to provide comprehensive care for expectant mothers whose babies are diagnosed prenatally with birth defects.
With your help Riley can help save 137 babies' lives each year by reducing Indiana's infant mortality rate to the national average.

Mary Pell Abernathy, M.D., MBA
Riley Maternal-Fetal Medicine Specialist

The impact of donors will be working together to decrease our high infant mortality rate and our maternal mortality rate. Along with saving lives, we will help bring more economic development to Indiana. When you look at the 600 infant deaths that occur per year in Indiana, about 45-50 percent are due to perinatal risk factors – characteristics we might have been able to have on impact on such as smoking, untreated hypertension, diabetes, and lack of prenatal care. Those are things we can identify and modify, and that is going to improve the health of all Hoosiers and save the lives of infants.
It's an exciting time to be a part of the Riley Maternity and Newborn Health team. I think any time you improve services for women in Indiana you're going to automatically improve services for children. We're working with communities to identify risk factors or unhealthy behaviors that increase the risk of infant and maternal mortality.

Anthony Shanks, M.D.
Riley Maternal-Fetal Medicine Specialist

MFMs not only take care of the highest-risk moms and babies, but we also serve as gatekeepers of new techniques and information for Ob/Gyns all across the state. MFMs are actively involved in research and education and our hope is that we set the standard of care using an evidence-based approach for all of these conditions.
Donors are helping Riley make huge waves nationally, and your generosity is a commitment to the women and babies who we serve. Riley Maternity and Newborn Health will be looked on as a benchmark for the nation. That is our goal. We are setting standards that will guide care throughout the region.

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Partners

Meridian Kiwanis Club of Columbus
330 8th St.
Columbus, IN 47201
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