Birth Defects Registry launches toy campaign

Sandy Gay, program assistant at the Iowa Birth Defects Registry, sits among dozens of stuffed toy bears in her Westlawn office. Photo by Tim Schoon.

The 20th anniversary of the Iowa Birth Defects Registry seemed like a perfect opportunity. How about giving stuffed animals to every child born in Iowa during 2003, the anniversary year? And how about doing that without requiring that any contributor to actually give money?

What an idea!

So Gay's office in Westlawn has a large copier box filled with 17,674 tiny bear stickers, the first deposit in what Gay hopes will be a deluge. That number of stickers translates into 3,314 small animals-gold and purple teething rings in the shape of a bee, tiny teddy bears, and a host of other small creatures. Each will go to a baby born in Iowa in 2003. The toys will have a small tag explaining the program and the registry's mission, along with contact information.

How it works: For years Iowa Book & Supply Commercial Sales has given stickers to procurement people throughout the University and the Iowa City communities when supplies are ordered from the store. The business, in turn, redeems the stickers for toys. Various departments across campus have donated stickers to the registry, and Iowa Book has agreed to donate a sticker for every two stickers that Gay collects.

Although the total received after four months into the campaign is impressive, Gay needs more. About 37,000 babies are born in Iowa each year. That would mean approximately 259,000 stickers need to come in. Does that daunt her?

"Well," she says with a smile, "we have until the end of 2003 to do it."

Each year, registry field staff visit Iowa hospitals to gather data on children born with birth defects. Next year, they will visit with toys in tow, to be given out as mothers leave the hospitals.

Birth defects are the leading cause of death in infants under one year of age; they affect 150,000 babies nationwide per year. It is believed that adequate amounts of folic acid in the diets of childbearing-aged women would decrease the incidence of the defects by at least 50 percent. A healthy diet can provide some, but not all, of the required amount. The need, Gay says, is to persuade women in this age group to take folic acid every day throughout childbearing years.

The project, Gay notes, "has been really neat. We showed it off at Staff Celebration Day, and I get little Post-it notes from contributors thanking us for contacting them. One person alone gave us 2,217 stickers! It has been wonderful. It shows their commitment to what we are doing."

Gay says the idea developed last fall. The first step was to get permission from a wide variety of University officials, from the College of Public Health to the University of Iowa Foundation and the University's legal department as well as the registry's executive committee. Then a registry team added up the numbers of children born in the state last year and started calculating whether they could get enough stickers.

Now that the program has started, Gay crosses her fingers and hopes that two things happen: stickers rain into the office, and young women nationwide realize that taking only 10 cents worth of supplements a day and eating a healthy diet could result in a healthy baby.

"If that happens," says Gay, who is an accountant rather than a fund-raiser, "I can get back to my books."

To donate stickers, contact Gay at sandy-gay@uiowa.edu or (33)5-8585.

Article by Anne Tanner