Given a paragraph, generate a claim that is supported by the given paragraph. 1) The claim must contain information from within the paragraph. 2) A sentence within the paragraph can be used as a claim. 3) The claim should not have contradictions within the paragraph. 4) The claim should be at most one sentence long.

The Alabama Department of Public Health announced the 2018 infant mortality rate was the lowest in Alabama history with 7.0 deaths per 1,000 live births It is an improvement over the 2017 rate of 7.4 and the 2016 rate of 9.1. “I am committed to improving the health of mothers and babies, and I am glad to see the infant mortality rates in 2017 and 2018 have improved from the rates earlier in this decade,” Gov. Kay Ivey said in a statement. However, Alabama’s mortality rate remains higher than the provisional U.S. rate of 5.7. “The continuing decline in Alabama’s infant mortality is a start to closing the historically large gap between the state and national rates,” Alabama Center for Health Statistics Director Nicole Rushing said. A total of 405 infants born in 2018 in Alabama died before reaching their first birthday. There also remains a racial disparity in infant mortality rates. The infant mortality rate for black infants in Alabama was 11.0 in 2018, more than twice the infant mortality rate for white infants at 5.1. State Health Officer Scott Harris said the the reduction in infant mortality is encouraging, but the state must continue to address Alabama’s racial disparities in birth outcomes, increase access to prenatal care and getting treatment for women for drug use disorders. Jim Carnes is the policy director for Alabama Arise, which advocates for low-income families. He said the state also needs to examine barriers to health care. “Of course we celebrate the improvements in Alabama’s rate, but there are some disturbing trends,” Carnes said, noting the persistent racial disparity and the number of births without prenatal care. While low-income women gain Medicaid coverage during pregnancy, they often don’t have care before or between pregnancies that could address chronic conditions or problems before they are pregnant, Carnes said. “That is something we could impact in a huge way with Medicaid expansion,” Carnes said. The Health Department said the leading causes of infant deaths in 2018 were congenital malformations, deformations and chromosomal abnormalities; disorders related to short gestation and low birth weight; sudden infant death syndrome and bacterial sepsis of newborns. These causes accounted for 50% of Alabama infant deaths.
Alabama infant mortality rate hits record low .

Dr. William D. Parham will oversee the union’s new program designed to help members with mental health issues. The program will be headquartered in Los Angeles. NBPA Executive Director Michele Roberts says the union has “heard our players’ stories and are making mental health a priority now.” Earlier this season, NBA stars Kevin Love of the Cleveland Cavaliers and DeMar DeRozan of the Toronto Raptors revealed issues they’ve struggle with on and off the court. Love detailed his experience with panic attacks and anxiety. DeRozan talked about battles with depression.
NBA players’ union hires director of mental health.

We gave the release a passing grade on cost for including context on the cost of an infection. “An estimated 1.3 million women in the U.S. delivered their babies by C-section in 2013, with surgical-site infections complicating 5 to 12 percent of those deliveries. The average cost of treating those cesarean-related infections in the hospital is $3,500 and may be much higher for severe infections.” Our wish list for this release might include whether chlorhexidine is any more expensive (or cheaper) than the standard of care and what the cost is for treating an infection outpatient. These are details that would have added to the quality of the release. However, infections are costs that can be prevented, and that is the main issue which the release covers well. The story quantifies the benefits well, explaining that a randomized-controlled trial showed “patients in the chlorhexidine-alcohol group developed significantly fewer infections than patients in the iodine-alcohol group. Those who received the chlorhexidine-alcohol combination had a 4 percent infection rate, which is nearly half that of the patients who received the iodine-alcohol combination — 7.3 percent.” The news release includes both relative and absolute numbers — a big plus. The absolute numbers included the number of women who developed infections after being treated with either chlorhexidine-alcohol (23) or iodine-alcohol (42) and the size of their co-hort (572 vs. 575). The news release doesn’t mention any harms associated with either of the antiseptics used in the study. If there were no skin reactions, or some with one but not the other, it would be good to note that. This is a minor omission. The release did a good job of explaining the quality of the evidence from this randomized controlled trial. Here is one paragraph about that evidence. “The clinical trial included 1,147 patients who underwent cesarean sections at Barnes-Jewish Hospital from 2011 to 2015. Of 572 patients randomly assigned to receive the chlorhexidine-alcohol combination, 23 developed an infection at the site of the surgery within 30 days of the procedure. Of 575 patients who randomly received the iodine-alcohol combination, 42 developed a surgical-site infection.” One thing that was discussed in the study that would have made the release better had it been included was the differentiation between minor and severe infections. There’s no disease mongering here. The release clearly states the funding sources. There were no apparent conflicts. The study compares an alternative method of skin preparation to the current standard and also mentions antibiotics. Soap and water could be another alternative, as could foregoing an elective C-section, but it’s probably too big a digression to mention these when reporting on a head-to-head study on antiseptics. We believe both skin-cleaning agents are widely available. So while the release never explicitly addresses availability, we don’t dock points for this. The release explained that other studies have examined skin-prep, but this one was the first to directly compare dual-element preps for C-sections. Here is an excerpt: “Past trials comparing antiseptics before surgery included relatively few participants and often compared a chlorhexidine-alcohol combination with iodine alone. These studies could not determine whether the worse performance of iodine alone was due to the chlorhexidine, the alcohol or the combination.” The release does not resort to unjustifiable language. It uses a measured tone and acknowledged a potential weakness when pointing out that the study was limited to a single hospital. The call for a change in practice, which in our opinion may be premature based on one single-site study, is offered as an opinion expressed by the senior author: “This study is a tremendous addition to the literature on preventing surgical-site infections after cesarean. There are few circumstances when a single study should change our practice. But based on the biological plausibility and the striking reduction in surgical-site infections with chlorhexidine, this is one of those circumstances.” We think experts can be given latitude to express a range of opinions in a news release.

To Prevent Infection After C-Section, Chlorhexidine Better Than Iodine