By: Kay Johnson, MEd, MPH and Laurie Zephyrin, M.D., M.P.H., M.B.A. Maternal health and maternal mortality are the subject of more than three dozen bills introduced in the first six months of the 117th Congress, and many of their provisions were included in the House reconciliation package currently under consideration. Building on proposals in the […]
The American Rescue Plan made billions available for state and local governments to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, including significant investments in programs that support children and families. The National Collaborative for Infants and Toddlers (BUILD) recently released an important new toolkit to help state advocates and policymakers make sense of funding opportunities through the […]
An important policy change to advance maternal health equity secured a spot in the Build Back Better Act, the budget reconciliation legislation currently under consideration in Congress. Pregnant people covered by Medicaid and CHIP would receive a full year of postpartum coverage, regardless of which state they live in. The bill requires that all states […]
Introduction The United States is experiencing a maternal mortality crisis and has the highest maternal mortality rate of any industrialized country in the world.8 In 2019, more than 750 women died of maternal causes in the United States while pregnant or within 42 days after the end of pregnancy, data from the Centers for Disease […]
The United States has an unacceptably high maternal mortality rate and it is getting worse. The latest data from the CDC shows that maternal mortality increased significantly between 2018 and 2019, topping out at the highest recorded rate since the agency began tracking the rate more than 30 years ago. A country’s maternal mortality rate […]
Maternal morbidity and mortality are ongoing crises in the US. Every year, 50,000 women experience serious complications following birth. These complications can be a result of health conditions experienced before and during pregnancy, and women of color have disproportionately high maternal morbidity rates. Policymakers have begun to take action to address this problem. As we […]
