Best Babies Zone Basics: A Step-by-Step Guide

Are you interested in eliminating racial inequities in birth outcomes? Would you like to see how one initiative tackled this issue? Then read on!

BBZ Basics is a step-by-step guide to implementing the Best Babies Zone (BBZ) approach. It is intended for both public health and non-public health organizations looking to start or build upon a place-based, multi-sector, community-driven initiative to reduce racial inequities in infant mortality.

The guide moves through six steps of a BBZ, including how to select a small, geographically defined Zone within a community; how to collaborate with residents and build resident leadership; and how to plan for evaluation. The guide also includes a number of tools and resources to help you in the planning process, such as a listing of online resources for health and social determinants data, a 2×2 priorities matrix, and more.

The BBZ Initiative began in March 2012 with funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. This guide was released December 2017 by the Best Babies Zone Technical Assistance Center at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health.