March of Dimes Foundation

The March of Dimes helps moms have full-term pregnancies and healthy babies. And if something goes wrong, we offer information and comfort to families. We research the problems that threaten our babies and work on preventing them.

Despite a down economy, we were able to count on the dedication of our volunteers and donors. With $241.8 million in revenue, we ended the year slightly behind last year, but we are determined to continue funding research, helping moms, supporting families and promoting the health of babies.

In 2008, we made progress in the following areas:
• NICU Family Support® sites across the country now reach more than 50,000 families with a baby in newborn intensive care every year.
• Advocacy efforts for newborn screening paid off, and every state now mandates testing for at least 21 serious but treatable conditions.
• The Surgeon General’s Conference on Preterm Birth resulted in an action agenda to reduce the prematurity rate.
• Millions of people supported the first-ever March for Babies® event. They walked with their families, friends and co-workers in 900 communities across the country.
• The first-ever Premature Birth Report Card brought much-needed attention to the growing problem of prematurity.
• We invested $26.8 million in new research grants to better understand and eventually prevent birth defects, premature birth and infant mortality.

To continue making progress, we extended our Prematurity Campaign to 2020 and will work to address the problem of premature birth globally.

With everyone’s support, we look forward to doing even more to help give every baby a healthy start.

Source: www.marchofdimes.com