The Empire State Building will light purple today in honor of the 4TH annual World Prematurity Day. Parent groups, nongovernmental organizations, UN agencies, government ministries, medical and health organizations around the world are joining together to raise awareness and take action on the serious global problem of preterm birth. Preterm birth and its complications now outrank all other causes as the leading killer of children under age five worldwide. An estimated 15 million babies around the world are born too soon every year, including nearly half a million in the United States. Learn more at facebook.com/WorldPrematurityDay. Special thanks to the Empire State Building for supporting 2014 World Prematurity Day.
The March of Dimes is investing $75 million in a specialized network of five research centers around the U.S. conducting team-based research to discover the unknown causes of preterm birth. The first one opened at Stanford University School of Medicine in California in 2011. The Ohio Collaborative, a partnership of leading research centers in Cincinnati, Columbus and Cleveland, was created in 2013. The Prematurity Research Center at Washington University in St. Louis launched on November 10, 2014, and today the March of Dimes Prematurity Research Center at the University of Pennsylvania was inaugurated. The fifth center will be named by the end of 2014. To learn more, please go to prematurityresearch.org.
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