A Tale of Two Births: Differences in Prenatal Care

Hello-

I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Deborah Stokol, and I'll be reporting the story with the help of P. Kim Bui.

I've been tyring to lock down a series of angles, approaches.

I figured I'd begin by casting a few electronic nets (pun?) over Facebook and Twitter, seeing whether that would yield potential sources.

This, like many others, seems to be the kind of story that will tell itself the more deeply the reporter delves. And I think that while speaking to hospitals and healthcare officials will be crucial toward seeing what the story's really about, what the numbers and large story experiences imply, I'm going to need to spend time with women who are pregnant in south and west LA, women who have experienced prenatal care in both areas and those who have had the grave misfortune to give premature births in one, either or both places.

I don't know to what degree we may attribute care, pollution, the varying lifestyles and socioeconomic differences implicit in the geographic divide as causes...I guess that's the point.

So for the sake of maximum transparency:

-A fellow Facebook just sent me a message saying she knew a few women of the aforementioned ilk who could be willing to discuss such things with me. Excellent.

-Kim, who will be putting together accompanying infographics to illustrate the story visually, and I planned for roughly three such graphics (static, rather than flash): one showing the pollution-->premature births statistics using a map of LA and each area's proximity to the city's many freeways (also included as threads running through the map), one showing a sort of contiguous set of care-->premature births stats for women living in each area and one that sort of sums the whole "story" up...taking into account, of course, that outliers exist, that folks lead their own lives, and that while generalities may be made, they can't accomodate for individual quirks.

-What that means in terms of diving in: calls to hospitals, healthcare officials, specialists, study research (UCLA/USC/those showing freeway pollution causes diminished lung capacity in children...a link to premature birth problem?), Lexis visits and the women themselves...

-If it is, indeed, more a traffic issue than one of prenatal care, this is most certainly an LA story. If it isn't, it's still a propos, as healthcare has, more than ever, been on the national mind, and where better to begin than one of the country's largest cities?

We have a little less than a month, so if there's anyone contextually relevant with which you're acquainted, any way you can help, by all means, let me, let Kim know. This is a big story; it's an important story. And we want it to be as good, as true and as in depth as we can make it given everything.

Thanks, and I'll be posting!