Photo by Mr. T in DC.

There’s good news out of Mayor Vince Gray’s office today: The infant mortality rate in D.C. is continuing to drop.

Gray and the D.C. Department of Health said in a press release Washington’s infant-mortality rate was 7.4 infant deaths per 1,000 live births as of 2011. The rate fell to a historic low in 2010 with a rate of 8 deaths per 1,000 births. Gray called the news “encouraging” in a statement.

The decrease is credited to increased public-health initiatives and access to prenatal services, an 86.3 percent reduction in smoking among pregnant women, an 8.6 percent reduction in teen births and a 50 percent increase in mothers who breastfeed, according to the release. These changes happened between 2010 and 2011.

The rate hit a terrible peak in 1989 when there were 23.1 deaths per 1,000 live births in D.C.