In Boston, a construction worker, ravaged by burns, successfully underwent a total face transplant. In San Antonio, surgeons have injected a glue-like substance that hardens and prevented the bursting of a woman’s brain aneurysm. And in my own institution, researchers have shown that stem cells from a patient’s own heart can help regenerate tissue and repair damage caused by a heart attack.

Every day the headlines are filled with breath-taking reports about the advances in American medicine. But even as it leads the planet in medical and scientific accomplishments, the United States also has some downright shameful disparities in its health care, and one of the worst is in the area of infant mortality.

Every year about 30,000 babies in our nation, a disproportionate number of them African Americans, die before reaching their first birthday.

U.S.: Laggards of industrial world

Last year, the infant mortality rate in the United States was an estimated 6.06 deaths per 1,000 live births, just ahead of Croatia, but lagging behind all of industrialized Europe and Asia.

For African Americans, the rate is worse. In 2007, the most recent year that a comparison is available, there were 13.3 deaths per 1,000 live births for African Americans, compared to 5.6 for […]