Over ten years ago, Sacramento County faced an undeniable truth: African American children were dying at twice the rate of all other children. That truth demanded action and sparked a movement. The Black Child Legacy Campaign’s Living Legacy: 2025 Strategic Plan marks a decade of that movement—and lays out where we go from here.
The results of our first ten years speak for themselves. Since 2015, infant sleep-related deaths have declined by more than 54 percent. Overall African American child deaths dropped 27 percent countywide—surpassing our original goal. These wins belong to the community.
But reduction is not elimination, and our work is not done. Developed by the Steering Committee for the Reduction of African American Deaths, the Living Legacy Strategic Plan charts the path forward across five strategic priorities: advocacy and policy, investment and systematic impact, coordinated systems of support, data-driven accountability and collective impact, and communications and information systems. It sets ambitious disparity reduction targets in our four focus areas—perinatal conditions, infant sleep-related deaths, child abuse and neglect, and third-party homicides—using 2019–2021 data as a new baseline.
It also marks a significant expansion: from seven Community Incubator Leads to eight, adding Rancho Cordova to the neighborhoods where BCLC’s trusted, culturally responsive wraparound services operate.
Most importantly, this plan centers Black families and children as the foundation of everything we do. Read Legacy Forward: The Living Legacy 2025 Strategic Plan. The legacy continues.