Health Policy

By Sarah Heath, March 12, 2020, Patient Engagement A package of legislative proposals aims to prop social determinants of health funding to target black maternal health disparities. The package of nine bills, titled the Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act of 2020 , is sponsored by Representatives Lauren Underwood and Alma Adams, as well as Senator Kamala Harris. The legislation builds on existing laws focusing on black maternal health disparities specifically by supplanting efforts to address...

By Stacey Millett, February 25, 2020, for PEW Trusts Cross-sector solutions needed to address complex challenges One in five Americans lives in a rural area, including about 18 million women of reproductive age, but key indicators, including mortality figures, show that the health of mothers and children in these communities lags behind that of their urban peers and is worsening. Nationwide, child mortality rates have declined over the past decade, but recent research shows that improvement...

Please click HERE to read more about this California specific information. Provisional Postpartum Care Extension (PPCE) – SB 104 SB 104 (Chapter 67, Statues of 2019) authorized DHCS to implement the PPCE, which will extend Medi-Cal or Medi-Cal Access Program coverage for pregnant or postpartum individuals who provide confirmation from a provider indicating that the individual has been diagnosed with a maternal mental health condition during their pregnancy , postpartum period, or 90-day cure...

In an ideal maternal health system, all women would have access to comprehensive, seamless medical care with links to behavioral, economic, and social supports. Additionally, they would be engaged with this system before, during, and after pregnancy. Across the United States, many women are not receiving care in this ideal system, and women in rural communities face unique challenges that make it harder for them to reach this ideal or any care at all in some cases. Because maternal health...

By World Health Organization (photo by WHO/Malin Bring) The findings of a new study on the life-course health consequences and associated annual costs of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) show that preventable trauma in childhood costs north America and the European Region US$ 1.3 trillion a year. The article, published in the Lancet and co-authored by Dinesh Sethi and Jonathon Passmore, Programme Manager, Violence and Injury Prevention, WHO/Europe, looks at the legacy of ACEs and their...

August 16, 2019 Washington, DC -- Ted L. Anderson, MD, PhD, president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), released the following statement regarding the announcement by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that 24 awards, supporting 25 states, were made for the Enhancing Reviews and Surveillance to Eliminate Maternal Mortality (ERASE MM) Program: Legislation signed into law in December 2018 funds maternal mortality review committees “The...

Melinda Coates experienced a tumultuous pregnancy. “I was really mentally upset literally from day one (of the pregnancy),” she says. (Melinda Coates is a pseudonym. To protect her and her children’s privacy and safety, we are not using her real name.) Coates had hoped to get counseling last October, when she was seven months pregnant. That’s when she enrolled in the state’s Medi-Cal program, shortly after she and her abusive husband moved to California, “but nobody was able to get me in...