School of Public Health Aids Mission Hill Project

When community leaders in Roxbury's Mission Hill area decided to do something about the neighborhood's high infant mortality rate, they consulted experts at Harvard's School of Public Health (SPH).

As a result of those meetings, a new program geared toward providing information and support for Mission Hill's mothers and pregnant women opened its doors yesterday.

Project LIFE--Lowering Infant Fatality through Education--will guide pregnant women and new mothers with economic, social or medical problems to existing support agencies, project officials said.

From 1980 to 1984, Mission Hill's infant mortality rate was more than twice that of Boston as a whole. The Black infant mortality rate almost four times the city-wide average.

"We don't seek to replace any of the experts," said Program Director Lynne Tyree. "We're not doctors. We're not therapeutic psychologists. [The group's purpose is to] provide access to community services--to provide hope."

Tyree said Project LIFE plans to actively seek out women in need of help because "if it's a rainy day, they're not going to bring the baby here." Each of the program's coordinators hopes to contact five women a day to give them information about the program, Tyree said.

The SPH helped Mission Hill community leaders organize the program and obtain a grant from the Boston Foundation, Tyree said, a process which she said took several years since it was first conceived. Tyree added that she planned to ask Phillips Brooks House, the undergraduate community service organization, for future assistance.

Tyree also said area residents helped Project LIFE get off the ground by donating furniture and other equipment, including a copying machine. "The community aspect is the backbone," she said.

Project LIFE currently receives no federal or state funding, but Tyree said the program might seek government money in the future. "We have to see which way the wind is blowing," she said.

And Tyree said the organization is also looking for corporate assistance. The Zayre corporation has already given money for a "toy lending library," to serve families unable to buy toys for their children, she said.