Fault Lines - America’s Infant Mortality Crisis - full episode

Every year in America more than 11,000 babies die on the day that they’re born. If a baby is African-American, they are more than twice as likely as other infants to die before their first birthday.

In Cleveland, Ohio—America’s infant mortality capital—the rates of premature birth and infant death in many neighborhoods exceed those of developing nations. According to the Cleveland Department of Public Health, the city’s black babies are dying at a rate three times higher than that of their white peers.

Fault Lines goes inside the neonatal intensive care unit at Cleveland’s Metro Health Medical Center and speaks to mothers experiencing loss and those whose babies are at-risk to find out why a country that spends so much on health care is failing to ensure the health of its newest citizens.