Author - Dr. Kenneth Leveno

UT Southwestern Medical Center’s primary adult teaching hospital has cut its rate of preterm births by more than half in the past 15 years, even as national rates are rising, researchers have found.

The drop at Parkland Memorial Hospital, from 10.4 percent in 1988 to 4.9 percent in 2006, was associated with a program of strictly coordinated and easy-to-access care – including prenatal care – for the largely minority, indigent population served by the county hospital, the UT Southwestern researchers said.

“This is a model for the uninsured in the country,” said Dr. Kenneth Leveno, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at UT Southwestern and lead author of the study, which appears in the March issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology. “I think we all should be proud of this system.”

The researchers began their analysis in response to a 2006 report on preterm births by the Institute of Medicine. The institute stated that the national rate of prematurity was 9.4 percent in 1981 and 12.5 percent in 2004, representing a 33 percent increase.

“Infant mortality is one way in which societies measure how they take care of their people, and two-thirds of infant mortality is due to premature birth,” said Dr. Leveno. “It’s a measure of the social fabric."

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