Ratnasiri AWG, Lakshminrusimha S, Dieckmann RA, et al. - Via performing this retrospective study of data from the linked birth and infant death files (birth cohort) and live births from the Birth Statistical Master files (BSMF) in California assembled by the California Department of Public Health for 2007–2015, researchers investigated current maternal and infant predictors of infant mortality, including maternal sociodemographic and economic status, maternal perinatal smoking and obesity, mode of delivery, and infant birthweight and gestational age. Findings revealed a linear decrease in the infant mortality rate (IMR) for singleton births from 4.68 in 2007 to 3.90 (per 1,000 live births) in 2015. However, there appeared persistence of wide disparities in death rates in different groups, and an ongoing increase in these disparities. The risk of infant mortality was higher for children of African American women vs children of White women, for infants of women with education less than high school vs those of women with Bachelor’s degrees or higher, for infants of maternal smokers vs those of nonsmokers and for infants of WIC participants vs infants of non-WIC participants. Infants of women who were overweight and obese during pregnancy accounted for 55% of IMR over all women in the study. Children of women with lower socioeconomic status accounted for more than half of the infant deaths. Regarding infant predictors, infants born with low birth weight or preterm birth were more than six times and almost four times more likely to die than infants who had normal births, respectively. Furthermore, mortality was more frequent among small-for-gestational-age and large-for-gestational-age infants than appropriate-for-gestational-age infants. Findings suggest that the highest value interventions to decrease IMR may be social and public health initiatives that reduce differences in sociodemographic, economic and behavioral risks for mothers.