[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George H. W. Bush (1992, Book I)]
[May 11, 1992]
[Pages 738-740]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



[[Page 738]]

Remarks on Maternal and Infant Health Care

May 11, 1992
    Thank you, Lou, thank you, Secretary Sullivan, and welcome, 
everyone. Let me just pay a special thanks to Senator Dale Bumpers and 
to Congressman Tom Bliley, who have been spearheading many of our 
prenatal and immunization initiatives on Capitol Hill. They are true 
leaders for this cause, and we're delighted to see you all here today. 
Also to Jim Mason, our Assistant Secretary for Health; Bill Roper from 
Atlanta, doing a superb job as our Director at CDC. And a warm welcome 
to representatives of the Advertising Council and to all the very 
special mothers and children who are with us today.
    Yesterday, on Mother's Day, millions of Americans took time to 
appreciate the miracle of motherhood. We thank the mothers who brought 
us into this world, who taught us our first lessons about life and love 
and character. Today, we're taking some vital steps to help American 
mothers, their children, and their families. We're announcing improved 
standards and a new action plan for immunization. We're beginning a 
public service ad campaign to promote an innovative prenatal care 
program called Healthy Start, the program Dr. Sullivan referred to.
    Every year in America thousands of babies are delivered at 
dangerously low birth weights, and too many of these babies die or 
suffer chronic illness as a result. Thousands of our young children 
suffer crippling effects each year from measles and other communicable 
childhood diseases, and some even die. But the saddest fact of all is 
this: Most of this death and disease is easily preventable through 
immunization and through better prenatal care. To the extent they are 
preventable, they too often reflect bad health choices stemming from 
ignorance of good health behavior or absence of a defined sense of 
personal responsibility by the parents.
    All of our maternal and child health programs are being improved, 
integrated, and developed to promote the principles of innovation, of 
community involvement, and personal responsibility. We are using new and 
creative approaches to bringing high-risk women into care. To attack 
this problem we are mobilizing the Nation's best ideas and resources. 
The hallmarks of our plan can be summed up in two words: immunization 
and action.
    Last June I stood here in the Rose Garden with the Secretary to call 
for a stronger immunization effort. We sent out teams to six areas of 
our country to determine how we could do it better. We learned lessons 
that we're now applying nationwide. I was pleased to be a part of the 
visit to San Diego in February and happy that representatives of all six 
communities that we looked at are here with us today.
    Today we're announcing a new action plan to get our children 
vaccinated when it makes the greatest difference, before the age of two. 
The plan requires more effective coordination to promote vaccination 
among the various Federal Agencies that serve children. We're helping 
States and localities with their own immunization plans. And our 
administration's budget for immunization continues to respond to the 
need. For fiscal '93, we're seeking an increase to $349 million. We're 
also announcing new standards for pediatric immunization, the work of an 
expert panel representing many private and public sector organizations. 
They're going to help clinics improve their method to provide 
vaccination to kids who need them the most.
    I salute the leaders again of the Advertising Council for all the 
volunteer time and talent that you have organized for the cause of 
infant mortality. I know that public service ad campaigns such as this 
work. Think of the success of other Ad Council campaigns for kicking the 
smoking habit, for seatbelt use, for screening for cancer. All such 
efforts help people show greater responsibility in their own behavior.
    Now, I've often thought that the same sort of diligent use of 
marketing science and communications talents could help motivate 
Americans to address other problems involving personal responsibility, 
for in-

[[Page 739]]

stance, in keeping families together, encouraging responsible sexual 
behavior, and other matters of personal and family well-being. So I'm 
confident that the Ad Council's new campaign will have strong and 
positive results.
    The Council's messages will emphasize that the health of pregnant 
women and their unborn babies is a matter of concern to every member of 
a civilized society. When an expectant mother is financially needy or 
without a husband or a family to support her, it is all the more urgent 
for good neighbors to show that they care. The Ad Council's first 
message, therefore, targets the general public. It calls on all of us 
for action. The theme that you'll soon be hearing on television is this: 
We must not accept high rates of infant deaths because this is America.
    The second announcement will impress upon men the importance of 
their role. Whether a man is an unborn child's father or another family 
member or friend, there is much he can and should do to help an 
expectant mother. We cannot understate male responsibility.
    The third announcement will tell women that proper care begins long 
before the baby is born. Consider this: Babies born after a pregnancy 
with no prenatal care are four times more likely to die than those whose 
mothers received care beginning in the first trimester. The full series 
assures pregnant women in need that they are not alone. Care is 
available, and good neighbors are being mobilized to help.
    The Healthy Start approach represents what we should be doing to 
solve our social problems: local solutions, local control, local 
accountability. The first 15 Healthy Start communities were chosen from 
a long list of applicants. I understand that representatives of many of 
these communities from around the Nation are here today, and thank you 
all for your good work.
    We're not weighing down these community initiatives with burdensome 
Federal mandates and command-and-control regulations. We're seeking to 
empower neighborhood volunteers in local governments to invent effective 
new ways to help save babies' lives and keep babies and their mothers 
strong and healthy.
    Healthy Start successes will come from people who see neighbors in 
need and ask, ``What can I do to help?'' And they follow through on 
their generous impulses. And they keep noticing and helping more people. 
I'm talking about people like Minnie Thomas in Oakland, California. An 
energetic grandmother, she was helping drug abusers when she learned 
there was no facility for drug abusers who became pregnant. So she 
opened her own facility called Solid Foundation. And 47 kids have been 
born to mothers at Solid Foundation, and not one suffered from low birth 
weight.
    Here in Washington, Tawana Fortune-Jones is the woman with the Mom 
Van, and she knocks on doors in neighborhoods where infant mortality is 
high. She's enlisted the cooperation of doctors and clinics to establish 
a Healthy Start Pregnancy Register. She drives the Mom Van, and each 
morning at 7 a.m. she begins picking up women and taking them to 
doctors' offices. Afterwards she takes them home, and then she shuttles 
another group in the afternoon. She's a friend to women who have no 
other friends, and she's saved and bettered the lives of hundreds of 
babies. And she's here with us today. Tawana, where are you now? Right 
over here. Tawana, good neighbors are the heroes of our cities, and 
you're the model of a good neighbor. Thank you for what you do.
    Unbelievable as it may seem, the innovations of Healthy Start ran 
into resistance up in Congress where they are still too much wedded to 
the old bureaucratic ways of doing things. I'm optimistic, though. I 
believe our approach for empowering people with new ideas is the way of 
the future. Our crusade for preventive health care for infants and 
expectant mothers will move a step further when we reform this--overall 
reform of the health insurance system. I've proposed making every 
American able to afford a basic health insurance plan of his choice, 
using credits or vouchers. And through the market system, we would 
provide needy Americans better health care than they now receive.
    These two efforts represent a new way of solving our problems in 
infant mortality and immunization. Our guiding principle is to

[[Page 740]]

reach out: Reach out to young parents, make sure they know what they 
need to do, and then help them to do it; reach out to community 
organizations; reach out to the private sector; and reach across the 
artificial lines in our Government so that any program that touches 
young children and their parents will become an opportunity point for 
better health.
    We have new kinds of problems, and so we've got to think in new 
ways. We need to think about all the opportunities that we have to draw 
in young families who may be left out today, to help them, to inform 
them. We need to enlist them and enlist our communities to work together 
to help them. All the community organizations have a tremendous role to 
play. It's already worked in our six demonstration immunization cities, 
and I am confident that it's going to work in Healthy Start and in more 
immunization communities all around this great country.
    Thank you all for your leadership. Again, my respects to the two 
Members of Congress here. Thank the doctors here, and thank all of you 
working in the communities to make life just a little better for the 
kids and for the families out there. Thank you all for coming.

                    Note: The President spoke at 11:16 a.m. in the Rose 
                        Garden at the White House.