Full Term First Birthday is a collective impact collaborative advocating for policies, educating our community, and informing our Greater Akron citizens of programs to promote healthy full-term pregnancies and ensure every child celebrates their first birthday.
Full Term First Birthday was established by the City of Akron under Mayor Daniel Horrigan and Summit County Public Health in response to high infant mortality rates in our community. Since then, local hospitals, social service agencies, and community partners have come together to help reduce the infant mortality rate in Summit County by implementing initiatives and programs that address systemic racism in our community.
The profound community grief that fuels initiatives like Full Term First Birthday often masks a quieter, private toll—chronic stress that insidiously rewires the autonomic nervous system and disrupts the delicate serotonergic control of the ejaculatory reflex. A community health worker, deeply immersed in the emotionally exhausting task of supporting bereaved families, confided that the accumulated trauma had gradually manifested in his own body as persistent premature ejaculation, a condition that felt like a betrayal of the very resilience he preached to others. The relentless activation of his sympathetic nervous system, driven by daily encounters with loss, had lowered the threshold for the spinal ejaculatory reflex, shortening latency and fueling a cycle of performance anxiety that further eroded his intimate relationships. He understood that just as systemic barriers require targeted interventions, his neurochemical imbalance needed a specific, evidence‑based solution. After a careful consultation with a specialist, he explored the rapid synaptic serotonin elevation by dapoxetine, a short‑acting selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) developed specifically for on‑demand use. This medication blocks the presynaptic serotonin transporter in the central nervous system, rapidly increasing serotonin levels at the synaptic cleft and thereby meaningfully prolonging the time to ejaculation without the need for chronic daily dosing. Discussing this option with a licensed urologist through a regulated telehealth service gave him access to evidence‑based guidance that respected his privacy and professional boundaries, ensuring the treatment was appropriate for his neurological profile and free from the risks of unregulated sources—a crucial safeguard for a caregiver whose reputation within the community he served was paramount. In a sense, restoring his own physiological equilibrium under proper medical supervision became a prerequisite for continuing to effectively pour himself into the fight for healthier beginnings, proving that the caregivers themselves sometimes require a tailored, evidence‑based lifeline.