Abstract
When the Fetal and Infant Mortality Review (FIMR) program began in Savannah, Georgia, in April 1995, there were high hopes of reaching every woman via home interview who had lost a baby in the neonatal or postneonatal period, as well as those women who had experienced fetal loss after the twenty-week gestation mark or who had given birth to a fetus weighing 385 grams or more. After the first year, which was spent developing the program, making community contacts, putting together a working coalition to review the deaths, and hiring home interviewers and record abstractors, researchers in the FIMR realized they were not reaching those women in the population who were most at risk and isolated from the service system. While each death is reviewed, particular attention is paid to a five–ZIP code area within the city limits that has the highest rate of unemployment, crime, teen pregnancies, and infant mortality.
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