In her nursing career, the two main Public health issues that Mary Breckinridge tried to address included infant mortality and maternal mortality. Maternal mortality refers to a pregnant woman’s death or the death of a woman that occurs within 42 days after her pregnancy is terminated (Woodbury, 1926). This is normally irrespective of what caused the death. Infant mortality refers to the death of young children usually below the age of one year.

The domains of public health services that were used to address these public health issues included giving special training to nurses on prenatal and postnatal care (Jordan et al. 2014).  Prenatal care involves the special healthcare that should be given to women during pregnancy while postnatal care involves care that should be given to women after they have given birth. This requires that the expectant mother goes for several visits to a clinic with antenatal care before and after childbirth. Prenatal and postnatal care helped reduce mortality rate as the health conditions of mothers were well monitored. The other domain was the provision of special vaccines to newborns at specific times within one year since birth. These vaccines were meant to protect children whose immune system was not strong enough to fight dangerous diseases at their tender age. This domain helped reduce infant mortality rate.

Today in the United States, the maternal mortality rate is still an issue of concern, as the rate seems to be rising while infant mortality rate, on the other hand, has decreased impressively (Bishai et al. 2009). Strategies set aside to reduce maternal deaths are the same as those that were introduced by Mary, but the difference now is that in the world today there is the issue of ignorance and lack of protocol, leading to repetitive errors over time. Up to date children below the age of one year are still receiving vaccines and that explains the drop in infant mortality over the years.

References

Bishai, David, & Opuni, Marjorie. (2009). Are infant mortality rate declines exponential? The general pattern of 20thcentury infant mortality rate decline. (BioMed Central Ltd.) BioMed Central Ltd.

Jordan, R. G., Marfell, J. A., Engstrom, J. L., & Farley, C. L. (2014). Prenatal and postnatal care: A woman – centered approach.

Woodbury, R. M. (1926). Infant mortality and its causes: With an appendix on the trend of maternal mortality rates in the United States. Baltimore: The Williams & Wilkins Company.

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