A hundred years ago in the United States, one child in four died before reaching 5 years of age, and the average family lost at least one child, usually to fatal infectious disease. However, since the beginning of the 20th century, our ability to protect the health of reproductive-age women and their children has vastly improved.
Maternal deaths are rare events, and most parents can expect every child born to live to adulthood.
Public health practitioners see these numbers as a call for more action to improve the health of women and children. Additional numbers suggest which actions may be most effective. As we look into the 21st century, we see rapidly improving technology for collecting, examining, and acting upon data. Health-care reform, regardless of its design, will succeed in improving the lives of women and children only with careful attention by the public health community to trends in the application of effective interventions and concomitant improvement in health outcomes. These data will be critical to determining whether available resources are being effectively applied.