To Save Babies, We Need a Team – Let\'s Build One!

Abstract

All over the world, infancy is a period marked by a high risk of morbidity and mortality. [1][2][3] And a death so early in life has implications -each time we lose an infant, we lose an entire life and all its potential. 4 Advances in neonatal care have stimulated the development of multidisciplinary rehabilitation teams to provide supportive services for these patients. 5 All of us understand the goals of improving outcomes of infants and families, but the aims and objectives may need to be tailored for individual centers, communities, and even countries. [6][7][8][9] The panoramic truth is that to save babies, we need teamwork. [10][11][12] In both high-acuity and/or limited-resource settings, we often need a wide array of medical providers, support services, and family members to interact dynamically and interdependently to care for newborn infants. 13,14 Higher the acuity of illness, greater might be the need for "fluidity" with adaptive team membership. 15 Based on philosophy, resources, and other considerations, the models of service delivery may have to be tailored for hospitals, communities, societies, and countries. We need to develop professional competence, collaboration, continuing education, effective communication, accountability, legislative support, and mutual respect that need to be focused on individual patients, families, and care units. [16][17][18] Our journal, the newborn aims to cover fetal/neonatal problems that begin during pregnancy, start at the time of birth, or occur during the first 1000 days after birth. As in our previous issues, we present 8 important articles (Figure 1). In this 1 st issue of the 3 rd volume, we report three developments. Each one has the same message -to save babies, we need a team. Let's build one! (a) Seventeen associations of care providers from all over the world are now collaborating with the Global Newborn Society (GNS)and have adopted the newborn as their official journal. In addition to the GNS, we are now the official mouthpiece for associations focused on Down syndrome, autism care, infant nutrition, and neonatal brain injury in infants from many countries, including (East to West