March of Dimes

March of Dimes was established by Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) in 1926 as the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation. Once he was able to return to politics, Roosevelt turned the organization over to his colleague Basil O’Connor (1892–1972) who turned it into the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (NFIP). O’Connor led the March of Dimes for three decades, and the organization became a major force in wiping out polio, a crippling disease and a leading cause of death in American children in the first half of the twentieth century. In 1952, for instance, polio struck down 60,000 children and caused the deaths of 3,000. The March of Dimes helped to fund the development of the Salk vaccine and Sabin vaccine, which eradicated polio around the world. The March of Dimes then turned to dealing with the impacts of premature births and birth defects. By the twenty-first century, much of the organization’s focus was on genetic education and research.

Background

Franklin Roosevelt contracted polio in 1921 at the age of 39. In 1926, he founded the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation as a rehabilitation center for white victims of polio. At the time, little attention was being paid to providing care for African Americans with polio because of a mistaken belief that they could not contract the disease. In the South, where the majority of African Americans lived, the lack of electrification and water filtration systems had kept incidences well below that of other areas. It was not until 1941 that the Tuskegee Infantile Paralysis Center opened in Alabama with funding from the March of Dimes. In addition to offering rehabilitation for African American polio victims, the 36-bed facility provided training for African American physicians, nurses, and therapists.

After being elected governor of New York, Roosevelt convinced Basil O’Connor, his friend and law partner, to take over at Warm Springs. O’Connor reorganized, establishing the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis as a nonprofit organization. Initially, funding was generated by private donations and an annual ball held on FDR’s birthday (January 30). The first ball in 1934 raised $1,016,444. By 1938, it had become clear that more substantial funds were needed to keep up with the spread of polio. By that time, researchers had identified two different strains of viruses that caused polio. A third strain was subsequently identified.

O’Connor and his team realized that, despite the Great Depression, everyone could help to fund polio research and care, and they devised a plan to collect dimes. Cards were distributed that could hold up to twenty dimes each. Eddie Cantor, a vaudeville and radio star, suggested that funding efforts should be named the March of Dimes as a play on the title of the popular radio news show, The March of Time. The name stuck, and NFIP became popularly known as the March of Dimes. The initial campaign in 1938 raised $1.8 million. Local theaters also raised money for the March of Dimes by passing collection buckets. In 1945, theaters raised $8 million of $19 million raised by the March of Dimes. In 1950, the Mothers March on Polio campaign was launched, and 2,300 volunteers raised $44,890 in one hour of canvassing their neighborhoods.

Impact

In 1947, Jonas Salk (1914–1995) received a grant from the March of Dimes to develop a polio vaccine. By 1952, he had succeeded. Two years later, 1.8 million schoolchildren took part in a field trial, and the vaccine was approved for general use the following year. By 1957, incidences of polio had dropped by 85 to 90 percent. Albert Sabin (1906–1993) was also working on a vaccine, and he succeeded in developing a vaccine that could be administered on the tongue or in a lump of sugar. By 1962, physicians had begun using the Sabine vaccine rather than the Salk vaccine, which had to be injected.

By the time that polio vaccines were introduced, the March of Dimes had grown to include more than three thousand chapters across the United States. Offices were staffed by volunteers, and chapters retained half of all funds raised at the local level. In 1955, the March of Dimes funded the establishment of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, to serve as an interdisciplinary research center. In 1959, Virginia Apgar (1909–1974), who had devised the Apgar Score used to identify possible birth defects in newborns, became the Vice President for Medical Affairs at the March of Dimes. She was instrumental in helping to reshape the organization in its post-polio era. Apgar’s focus was on providing affordable health care to all pregnant women and educating the public about birth defects.

In 1976, Apgar and the Committee on Perinatal Health published Toward Improving the Outcome of Pregnancyto educate women about the importance of good health and nutrition during pregnancy, teaching them that both were essential in preventing birth defects and premature/low-weight births. The March of Dimes launched the Be Good to Your Baby before It Is Born campaign and established programs for pregnant women such as Operation Stork and Stork’s Nest. The 1970s also saw the birth of the March of Dimes Walk-a-Thons, which changed its name to the March for Babies in 2008. In the 1980s, the March of Dimes turned its attention to the impacts of HIV/AIDS and substance abuse on pregnant women and their infants.

Reagan-era slashes to social programs led to a rise in infant mortality, causing the March of Dimes to develop a new focus on reducing deaths among infants in their first year of life in the 1990s. Other efforts involved the introduction of the Healthy Babies, Healthy Workplace seal of approval and passage of the Birth Defects Prevention Act of 1998. That same year, the March of Dimes established its Folic Acid Campaign after the discovery that insufficient folic acid during pregnancies could cause birth defects. March of Dimes funding enabled David Smith and Lyons Jones to identify fetal alcohol syndrome, which leads to both physical and mental disabilities in babies whose mothers have consumed excessive amounts of alcohol during pregnancy. Funding was also provided to T. Allen Merrill, who invented a pulmonary surfactant used to treat infants suffering severe respiratory distress.

In 2003, the global Human Genome Project completed the mapping of the human genome, leading to a new focus on the impact of genetics on health and disease. The March of Dimes formed a partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to teach medical care professionals about the benefits of taking detailed family histories to better understand that impact. In 2005, the March of Dimes set up neonatal units after Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath devastated the Gulf Coast.

In 2018, the March of Dimes launched the My NICU Baby application for mobile phones. The free application gives families access to educational resources and tracking tools regarding infants in the NICU. It also provides tracking tools for the baby's weight, feedings, and social tools related to the March of Dimes online community. The My NICU Baby application was downloaded more than ten thousand times during its first year.

In its 2024 report Nowhere to Go: Maternity Care Deserts Across the US, March of Dimes found that maternity care was worsening across the United States. Some of the report's key findings included that more than 100 counties experienced a decline in access to maternity care since 2022 and that more than one-third of US counties were now classified as maternity care deserts, counties with no birthing facilities or obstetric clinicians. Some of the states with the highest percentage of counties with no access to maternity care were North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Alaska.

The March of Dimes provides prenatal education in Latin America, Europe, and Asia. It also offers assistance to families of infants in neonatal intensive care units (NICU) through the March of Dimes Family Support Program.

Bibliography

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