Infant mortality: priority for social work

Despite a clear mandate and pressing social need, the social work profession has not adopted infant mortality as a clear priority in the 1980's. This failure to claim infant mortality as a professional priority occures in spite of evidence that the factors responsible for infant deaths may be especially appropriate for social work interventions. Social work has an important role in the reduction of preventable infant deaths, and many individual social workers already are active in perinatal social work and other specialities involved in saving infant lives. The profession should make a new commitment to this serious social problem.