- Millions of volunteers and donors made mission goals possible.
- We are making headway in preventing premature birth.
- More than $31 million was invested in research in 2011.
This was a year of new beginnings for the March of Dimes. In 2011, we established the Prematurity Research Center at the Stanford University School of Medicine to speed up our understanding of the causes behind premature birth. We launched the Healthy Babies are Worth the Wait™ educational campaign to address the need to reduce the risks caused by elective deliveries before 39 weeks of pregnancy. On November 17, we held the first World Prematurity Day to focus global attention on the impact of premature birth worldwide. And our NICU Family Support® program celebrated its 10th anniversary and served 80,000 families at more than 114 hospitals across the county, providing information and comfort.
We distributed $31 million in grants to investigators throughout the country. These studies promise to shed light on how birth defects develop and why babies are born too soon.
Thanks to a strong volunteer leadership, and with the committed passion of thousands of Americans, the March of Dimes weathered a challenging economic environment. We closed the books with a balanced budget and modest growth in revenue. We continued our work to prevent the problems that put babies at risk. We reached out to moms. We supported research that helps improve the health of babies.
