According to new data, the infant mortality rate in some parts of Amarillo is significantly higher than the state average.
As The Amarillo Globe News reports,research from the University of Texas Center for Population Health shows every zip code in Amarillo has a higher infant mortality rate than the state’s average, with the exception of the mostly upper-middle class and white zip code of 79109, in southwest Amarillo.
The state average is around five and a half infant deaths per thousand births, and southwest Amarillo hovers just below that number. The part of northwest Amarillo, however, around the Tri-State Fairgrounds and Amarillo Boulevard, has a staggering rate of 18.36 infant deaths per thousand births—three and a half times the state average.
Casie Stoughton, City of Amarillo director of Public Health, attributed the high rates to unhealthy lifestyles.
“We have high smoking rates here in Amarillo, we have high obesity rates,” she said, adding, “We know that healthy activities produce healthy babies.”