By Katy B. Kozhimannil, Elaine Hernandez, Dara D. Mendez, Theresa Chapple-McGruder. Feb 4, 2019, Health Affairs
Maternal mortality is a death that occurs during pregnancy or within one year postpartum from “a pregnancy complication, a chain of events initiated by pregnancy, or the aggravation of an unrelated condition by the physiologic effects of pregnancy.” In the United States, maternal mortality is a clinical, public health, and social crisis. Between 1990 and 2013, maternal mortality nearly doubled in the US, while it declined elsewhere across the globe. The United States stands shamefully alone, and it is getting ever more deadly to give birth in the US. Statistics also show pernicious inequities in maternal and child health, with black women and infants being more likely than whites to die around the time of childbirth. Compared to families living in urban areas, rural women face greater risks in childbirth, and their infants are less likely to survive to celebrate their first birthday.
Despite these trends, the United States has only recently joined the rest of the developed world in establishing an infrastructure for systematically assessing maternal deaths. On December 21, 2018, the Preventing Maternal Deaths Act (HR 1318) was signed into law. This legislation sets up a federal infrastructure and allocates resources to collect and analyze data on every maternal death, in every state in the nation. The bill is intended to establish and support existing maternal mortality review committees (MMRCs) in states and tribal nations across the country through federal funding and reporting of standardized data.
The lives of women across this nation depend on the success of this legislation, including thoughtful implementation, consistent with the law’s intent, as well as additional policy change to support the law in reaching its goals.
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