S.D. Infant-Mortality Rate Drop Is 2nd Best in Nation : Health: Report finds decline of 33% from 1980 to 1988 in deaths among newborns in city. Only New Orleans had greater decline during the same period.

San Diego recorded the second-highest decline in the nation in infant-mortality rate between 1980 and 1988, the Children’s Defense Fund announced Tuesday in Washington.

San Diego’s infant-mortality rate declined 33% during the period studied, said Christine Layton, one of three authors of the report, “The Health of America’s Children, 1991.”

Only New Orleans showed a greater decline, at 37.2%, she said. San Diego’s decline was well above that of Los Angeles’ decline of 18.6%.

California showed a 27.1% drop in the infant-mortality rate from 1978 to 1988, and the rest of the nation 27.5%.

The report found that, in general, cities with a higher median income, lower minority population and increased access to social services and prenatal care fared better than cities without those conditions, said Layton.

Although the infant-mortality rate declined nationwide in the eight-year period--only Boston and Columbus, Ohio, showed an increase--Sun Belt cities showed “much sharper declines” than cities in the industrial Northeast, Layton said.

The report was prepared by the Children’s Defense Fund, which Layton described as a nonprofit, non-governmental advocacy group “engaged in lobbying and research on a range of children’s issues.”

The report indicated that, in 1980, San Diego’s infant-mortality rate was 12 deaths per 1,000 live births, contrasted with 8.1 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1988.

San Diego’s white infant-mortality rate declined 17.3% from 1980 to 1988, the study said, and its nonwhite infant-mortality rate during the same period declined 41%.

Cities with high black populations recorded declines in infant mortality but in much lower numbers than other cities, Layton said.

The District of Columbia, for instance, has the highest-infant mortality rate in the nation and is improving much more slowly than states and cities elsewhere, the study indicated.

According to the report, the overall infant-mortality rate for the District of Columbia was 23.5 deaths per 1,000 live births. Among cities of 500,000 or more, Detroit ranked next-highest with an infant mortality rate of 21 per 1,000, followed by Baltimore with a rate of 18 per 1,000.

Four cities showed an increase in the infant mortality rate among blacks: Boston (10.2%), Columbus, Ohio (6.2%), Houston (2.2%) and Milwaukee (2%).

In San Diego, no infant-mortality rate among blacks was tracked by the study for every year from 1980 to 1988 because, in some years, Layton said, “there were fewer than 30. Even if there were 29 (in such cities), we didn’t bother to calculate it.

“San Diego’s black population was just too small, and as a result, with fewer than 30 deaths (in any one year), it would have been unreliable to calculate a rate.”

But, as recently as 1984, the San Diego County Department of Health Services expressed concern about the infant-mortality rate in Southeast San Diego, which was then the highest in the county and among the highest in the state.

Nevertheless, the incidence of infant mortality declined in the county from 17.8 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1970 to 9.0 in 1981 and 1982 to 8.6 in 1983. The 1984 study commissioned by the county indicated that, in the mid-1980s, the infant mortality rate among blacks in San Diego County was about twice among the white population.

In 1983, the infant-mortality rate among blacks in the county was 20 per 1,000 live births, contrasted with 8.7 among whites.

A California study commissioned earlier this year indicated that Southeast Asian refugees have a much lower infant mortality rate than whites and other minority groups.

Though many women in the Asian refugee population receive prenatal care “much later than other women or not at all,” they have a lower infant-mortality rate because of abstention from alcohol, cigarettes and drugs, the study said.

Prenatal care, or the lack of it, “is the great determinant in infant mortality,” said Layton, of the Children’s Defense Fund.