Singer Raises Awareness About Complications of Preterm Births

— -- The members of Fifth Harmony are most famous for their hit song "Worth It," but today, group member Ally Brooke Hernandez is more focused on an issue close to her heart.

Nov. 17 is World Prematurity Day, sponsored by the March of Dimes to raise awareness of premature birth, and Hernandez feels strongly about this because she herself was born three months early.

"I was born [weighing] one pound, 14 ounces and I was really, really small," she told ABC News. "My dad could hold me literally in his palm."

Fifteen million babies around the world are born prematurely each year, and one million don't survive. Hernandez calls it a "scary journey" for families.

"When I was born, the doctors came out and told my parents, 'She’s got two things going for her: One, she’s a girl and girls tend to do better than boys. And two, she came out screaming and her lungs shouldn’t have been developed,'" she recalled. "And now I’m here and I’m glad that I’m able to partner with March of Dimes so we can help other babies like me, and other families like my own who went through the scary journey."

According to a study from the Stritch School of Medicine at Loyola University, female infants born prematurely learn to feed by mouth on their own sooner than their male counterparts.

"I just want to see people, of course, be aware of what’s going on and aware of this cause," she continued. "But most importantly I want the people who are going through this -- you know the tiny, little babies who are suffering in the hospitals and the families who are scared that their child may not make it -- I wanna see them come out of there with joy."

Meanwhile, Hernandez and her Fifth Harmony band mates are hard at work on a new album, the follow-up to their debut, "Reflection." She told ABC News that the group wants to change things up a bit with this new set.

"We love 'Reflection' and we really jam out to those songs and we authentically do like ‘em," she said, "But for this one, we also wanted to show a different side to us as far as vulnerability. Because in the 'Reflection' album, it has a lot of high energy songs, which is great, but we didn’t really get to show the softer side of us and that is what we’re excited about."

The fivesome is working with super-producers Max Martin and Stargate on the new album as well as singer Meghan Trainor.

The new Fifth Harmony album will arrive in 2016.