Аналар мен нәрестелер денсаулығын жақсартуға арналған американдық қайырымдылық ұйымы

American nonprofit organization

March of Dimes is a United States nonprofit organization that works to improve the health of mothers and babies. The organization was founded by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1938, as the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, to combat polio. The name "March of Dimes" was coined by Eddie Cantor. After funding Jonas Salk's polio vaccine, the organization expanded its focus to the prevention of birth defects and infant mortality. In 2005, as preterm birth emerged as the leading cause of death for children worldwide, research and prevention of premature birth became the organization's primary focus.

March of Dimes improves the health of mothers and babies through five programming areas: medical research, education of pregnant women, community programs, government advocacy, and support of pregnant women and mothers. The organization provides women and families with educational resources on baby health, pregnancy, preconception and new motherhood, as well as supplying information and support to families in the NICU who are affected by prematurity, birth defects, or other infant health problems. The foundation was an alliance between scientists and volunteers, with volunteers raising money to support research and education efforts. The National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis was a reconstitution of the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation, which Roosevelt and his friend Basil O'Connor founded with other friends in 1927. O'Connor became the foundation's president, a position he held for more than three decades. His first task was to create a network of local chapters that could raise money and deliver aid; more than 3,100 county chapters were established during his tenure. He inspired a nationwide fundraising campaign in the week preceding President Roosevelt's birthday on January 30, 1938. Lapel pins were sold for ten cents (a dime) each; special features were produced by the motion picture studios and radio industry; and nightclubs and cabarets held dances and contributed a portion of the proceeds. As Cantor himself stated, "The March of Dimes will enable all persons, even the children, to show our President that they are with him in this battle against this disease. Nearly everyone can send in a dime, or several dimes. However, it takes only ten dimes to make a dollar and if a million people send only one dime, the total will be $100,000." Cantor's appeal collected only few dimes and donations to begin with, just $17.50 had been sent in to the White House in two days. But what followed was a flood: by January 29, over 80,000 letters with dimes, quarters and dollars poured into the White House mailroom so that official correspondence to the President was buried in donation letters, with a final count of 2,680,000 dimes or $268,000 donated in what the press called "a silver tide which actually swamped the White House." Roosevelt went on the air to express his thanks, saying:

During the past few days bags of mail have been coming, literally by the truck load, to the White House. Yesterday between forty and fifty thousand letters came to the mail room of the White House. Today an even greater number — how many I cannot tell you — for we can only estimate the actual count by counting the mail bags. In all the envelopes are dimes and quarters and even dollar bills — gifts from grown ups and children — mostly from children who want to help other children get well. It is glorious to have one's birthday associated with a work like this.|Franklin D. Roosevelt in his birthday celebration broadcast January 30, 1938. Donald Anderson was the very first "poster child" to raise money for the March of Dimes. He was from Oregon and had been diagnosed with polio in 1943. Photos were taken of Donald in an almost paralyzed state. Another photo was taken seven months later to show how he had improved after receiving treatment funded by the foundation. His story was meant to show how regular, everyday Americans had helped Donald during his time in the polio ward by donating to the March of Dimes. The March of Dimes was the title used for the foundation's annual fundraising event that requested each child donate a dime. At the Christmas season, booths were set up in cities where the children could drop their dime in a slot. These were out on the street and sometimes not even overseen by anyone. Gradually the name became synonymous with that of the organization. "His genius was in generating large numbers of relatively small contributions for a cause," The New York Times wrote of O'Connor. "Over the years he collected and spent more than seven billion dimes — many of them from schoolchildren — with a half billion dollars of it going to the war on polio." Between 1951 and 1955, contributions to March of Dimes doubled to $250 million, which the organization's fundraising department attributed to the nationwide introduction of the Mothers' March on Polio calling the campaign, "the single greatest activity in the entire March of Dimes."

Around the same time, Albert Sabin (also with funding from the March of Dimes) developed a simpler version of the vaccine, which was based on an attenuated live version of the polio virus. Both Salk's version and Sabin's version had potential safety concerns; Salk's vaccine had the risk of a virus which is not completely inactivated, while Sabin's vaccine had the risk of reversion to virulence. In 1955, a batch of Salk's vaccine made by Cutter Laboratories in Berkeley, California was inadequately inactivated and, as a result, 11 children died. After this incident, production methods were changed and no further incidents were reported. Sabin became highly critical of O'Connor and the March of Dimes, who he believed were biased towards Salk's vaccine and made statements inconsistent with the scientific research. In the meantime, trials of the vaccine based on Sabin's version were carried out in the Soviet Union with important contributions made by Mikhail Chumakov. In the mid 1960s, the organization focused its efforts on prevention of birth defects and infant mortality, which became its mission. Vaccination is an effective preventive measure. On behalf of the March of Dimes, Virginia Apgar testified to the United States Senate in 1969 about the importance of federal funding of a rubella immunization program, and the organization funded a vaccine, which was licensed in the early 1970s. In 2006, a statement published in Birth Defects Research Part A credited the "remarkable success of the immunization program to eliminate rubella is due to joint efforts by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, various state and local health departments, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and the March of Dimes".

In 1976, the March of Dimes published a report titled Toward Improving the Outcome of Pregnancy (TIOP), and in 1993 they published Toward Improving the Outcome of Pregnancy: The 90s and Beyond (TIOP II). TIOP "stratified maternal and neonatal care into 3 levels of complexity and recommended referral of high risk patients to centers with the personnel and resources needed for their degree of risk and severity of illness." The program seeks to educate NICU staff to communicate effectively with patients' families. The March of Dimes hosted the Symposium on Quality Improvement to Prevent Prematurity in October 2009. In December 2010, the March of Dimes released TIOP III, subtitled Enhancing Perinatal Health Through Quality, Safety, and Performance Initiatives.

Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) is categorized as a group of birth defects ranging from mental retardation to various growth and behavioral problems. The March of Dimes has provided grant funding for FAS research, and they supported the National Council on Alcoholism in its push for legislation to bring public attention to the dangers of alcohol use by pregnant women. This led to a 1989 law mandating a warning label about the risk of birth defects that alcoholic beverages still carry today.

The March of Dimes has campaigned for public education on folic acid, a vitamin which can prevent neural tube defects such as spina bifida and anencephaly if mothers have enough of it in their body. The March of Dimes has funded polls on folic acid from The Gallup Organization. Analysis of some of the results, said that women aged 18–24 years had the least awareness regarding folic acid consumption or knowledge about when it should be taken. On the issue, the organization partnered with the Grain Foods Foundation, an industry group, in public education efforts.

Awareness about preterm birth, which is associated with a variety of negative health outcomes, is an organizational goal. According to an editorial in the May 2004 issue of the Journal of the National Medical Association, the original goals of the campaign were to raise awareness of the problem from 35 percent to at least 60 percent and to decrease the rate of premature births by at least 15 percent (from 11.9 percent to 10.1 percent). In 2008, the Prematurity Campaign was extended by the Board of Trustees until 2020, and global targets were set for prematurity prevention. In 2008, the March of Dimes started its annual Premature Birth Report Card, which grades the nation and each individual state on preterm birth rates.

The March of Dimes published its Global Report on Birth Defects in 2006, which estimated birth defects' global burden.

In 2009, the March of Dimes partnered with the Department of Reproductive Health and Research of the World Health Organization (RHR/WHO) to publish a white paper on the global and regional toll of preterm birth worldwide. This report, which was the first attempt to identify the global scope of premature births and related infant deaths, found that an estimated 13 million infants worldwide are born premature each year and more than one million of them die in their first month of life. Further, premature births account for 9.6 percent of total births and for 28 percent of newborn deaths. The highest rates of premature birth are in Africa, followed by North America (Canada and the United States combined).

Established in 1970, the March for Babies, previously called WalkAmerica, is the largest fundraiser of the year for the March of Dimes, as well as the oldest nationwide charitable walking event. In the decades since, many other organizations have used the walkathon format to help raise money. Funds raised by the event support March of Dimes sponsored research and other programs to prevent premature birth, birth defects and infant mortality. According to the March of Dimes, March for Babies is held in more than 900 communities across the nation. Every year, 1 million people—including 20,000 company teams, family teams and national sponsors—participate in the event, which has raised more than $1.8 billion since 1970. The March of Dimes states that seventy six cents of every dollar raised in March for Babies is spent on research and programs to help prevent premature birth, birth defects and infant mortality. The first person to walk for the March of Dimes was John Harrison Finger, a textile worker in High Point, North Carolina. In 1948, his daughter came home from school and asked for a donation for the polio fund. Finger replied that he did not have the money but that he would raise some. In what is thought to be the first walkathon in March of Dimes history, Finger walked 32 miles — round trip from High Point to Greensboro — and collected a total of $1,700 in a red wagon he pulled behind him. During his lifetime he walked more than 1,000 miles and raised $15,832 to benefit the charity. The March of Dimes formally created its nationwide WalkAmerica drive in 1971, and Finger was named "Mr. WalkAmerica" in 1983.

Once rare in the United States, cases of pertussis (whooping cough) are appearing across the country with greater frequency. To address this issue, the March of Dimes and Sanofi Pasteur launched a national education campaign in 2010 called "Sounds of Pertussis" to raise awareness about the seriousness of pertussis and the need for adult vaccination to prevent infecting babies. NASCAR driver Jeff Gordon is a national spokesperson for the campaign. The campaign recently sponsored a song writing contest called Sound Off About Pertussis, which was won by Maria Bennett with her original song, "Give Pertussis a Whooping."

To combat the state's high prematurity levels, in 2007, the March of Dimes, the Johnson & Johnson Pediatric Institute, and the Kentucky Department for Public Health partnered with six Kentucky hospitals to launch "Healthy Babies Are Worth the Wait," a health promotion and prematurity prevention initiative intended to reduce the rate of preventable preterm births in targeted areas of Kentucky. Kentucky was chosen as a pilot due to an elevated preterm birth rate greater than the national average that had been steadily increasing over the past few years, its predisposition to adjustable risk factors such as smoking and nutrition, and the commitment and dedication of community leaders. In 2007–2009, the trial programs saw a 6.5% reduction in preterm birth rates. The success of the program in the State of Kentucky led to the development of similar initiatives in New Jersey, Texas, New York, Kansas, and Illinois with upcoming sites in Florida and California. The primary goal of Healthy Babies Are Worth the Wait is a 15 percent reduction in the rate of singleton (one baby) preterm births in these targeted areas through increasing knowledge and education regarding factors that increase the risks of preterm birth, influencing change in health care settings and creating new advancements in preventing preterm and low birth weight births. Other strategic goals include improving access to prenatal services and lowering the rate of early elective deliveries done before 39 weeks gestation. Program initiatives and services include progesterone shots given to pregnant women with histories of preterm births, encouraging folic acid usage and stress management during pregnancy, and developing strategies to eliminate cesarean deliveries and inductions before 39 week's gestation unless medically necessary. The program was implemented as a Best Practice in the Association of Maternal & Child Health Programs (AMCHP) in 2015.

The March of Dimes Perinatal Data Center includes the PeriStats Web site, which provides free access to U. S., state, county, and city maternal and infant health data.

PREEMIE Reauthorization Act (S. 252; 113th Congress) – a bill that would reauthorize research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention related to preterm birth and take other actions to improve infant mortality rates. Newborn Screening Saves Lives Reauthorization Act of 2013 (H. R. 1281; 113th Congress) – a bill that would amend the Public Health Service Act to reauthorize grant programs and other initiatives to promote expanded screening of newborns and children for heritable disorders. The March of Dimes described the bill as reauthorizing "critical federal activities that assist states in improving and expanding their newborn screening programs, supporting parents and provider newborns screening education, and ensuring laboratory quality and surveillance."

Virginia Apgar, M. D., the creator of the Apgar Score, joined the March of Dimes in 1959 and eventually served as vice president for medical affairs.

Animal rights organizations have raised concerns about March of Dimes funded medical research involving animals. The foundation states it supports the use of non animal research alternatives wherever possible. In his book Essentials of Sociology: A Down to Earth Approach, sociologist Professor James M. Henslin describes March of Dimes as a bureaucracy that has taken on a life of its own through a classic example of a process called goal displacement. Faced with redundancy after Jonas Salk discovered the polio vaccine, it adopted a new mission, "fighting birth defects", which was recently changed to a vaguer goal of "breakthrough for babies", rather than disbanding. Charity Navigator, an organization that attempts to quantify the effectiveness of charities, has given the organization a rating of two stars (out of four). This is a merged score that attributes both a Financial as well as Accountability & Transparency rating to a non profit. As of Fiscal Year 2015, Charity Navigator gives a 60.18 out of 100 score for Financial and a 97.00 out of 100 for Accountability & Transparency. This gives the March of Dimes a merged score of 71.76, leading to their two star status. Another criticism has been that President Jennifer Howse's compensation is high. In 2011, the March of Dimes' tax filings reported it as $545,982, and the organization's filings from 2014 reported her salary as $503,692, about 25% higher than the median CEO salary for similarly sized charities.