Maternal and Child Health Resource Repository

AHA letter to Speaker Ryan and Minority Leader Pelosi expressing strong support for House passage of H.R.1318, the Preventing Maternal Deaths Act.

Parkview Hospital is one of the oldest – and only remaining – nonprofit hospitals in northeast Indiana. Parkview has a long history of community engagement based on reaching out and collaborating with community leaders and nonprofit agencies to deliver services, increase access, and address the social determinants of health. The Maternal and Infant Outreach initiative is offered in partnership with multiple social services agencies aimed at reducing infant mortality by providing resources to expectant and new mothers, including Healthy Families, Associated Churches, A Hope Pregnancy Center, Beds and Britches, Etc., SCAN, and the Neighborhood Health Clinic.

The Welcome Baby Program is part of a community network of programs that work together to provide supportive services to families with newborns.

Overview About eight out of 1,000 babies born in Delaware die before their first birthday, compared with a national rate of about six out of 1,000.

The birth of a child is and should be among the happiest events in a woman’s life. And hospitals and clinicians seek to partner with women to create and carry out birth plans that respect their wishes for this special time. As a nurse who has cared for women in labor, I know how important it is for the patient to be heard and be an active participant in her care.

AHA today joined more than 80 organizations in urging House and Senate leaders to bring H.R. 1318/S. 1112 to the floor for a vote before yearend. The AHA-supported legislation would provide federal funding for states to develop maternal mortality review committees to better understand maternal complications and identify solutions.

AHA letter to Congressional leadership expressing support to advance legislation – H.R. 1318/S. 1112  to reduce maternal mortality in the United States.  See details below.

Sixteen years ago, Victoria Flanagan, R.N., M.S., and Michele Lauria, M.D., M.S., became increasingly alarmed as provider after provider closed vaginal-birth-after-a-caesarean (VBAC) programs across northern New England. Today, NNEPQIN consists of 43 organizations throughout New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine involved in perinatal care, including hospitals, state health departments, professional midwifery organizations, and the March of Dimes.

In 2001, a Samaritan Health Services (SHS) physician, Dr. Richard Wopat, recognized the need to improve birth outcomes of high-risk pregnant women in the region. In collaboration with various community and state partners, he started a pilot program in 2002 at Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center to ensure that the most vulnerable pregnant women had access to care and to screenings for special issues including medical, obstetrical, and psychosocial concerns. Today, the Samaritan Maternity Connection (MC) program is now implemented at all five of the SHS hospitals and the three county health departments.

Mothers and infants enrolled in the Strong Start birth centers model had $2,010 lower costs on average, 25 percent lower preterm birth rates and better birth outcomes than other comparable women enrolled in Medicaid.

Learning how leading hospitals and health systems are creating change and improving maternal health and mothers experience is an important way to move the country forward on national maternal safety and quality goals. Providence St. Joseph Health works as a system and regionally on continued obstetric quality improvement and has positive results to share.

Jay Bhatt, DO, AHA senior vice president and chief medical officer, will welcome Neel Shah, MD, MPP, a nationally recognized expert on the complex challenges facing hospitals and health systems as we commit to reducing risks for mothers and babies throughout pregnancy.

An innovative patient centered maternity care model leveraging technology and enabling clinicians to drive better pregnancy outcomes for women with chronic hypertension earned Penn Medicine, University of Pennsylvania Health System, a top award in the 2018 AHA Innovation Challenge. Adi Hirshberg, MD, co-founder Heart Safe Motherhood and Assistant Professor of Clinical Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Pennsylvania, will present this model engaging, monitoring, and managing high risk patients from hospital admission, through delivery and after they have returned home postpartum.

AHA hosted this webinar, the first in a series of webinars on improving maternal health and reducing maternal mortality, on November 13, 2018. Patricia M. Witcher, MSN, RNC-OB, clinical outcomes manager of Northside Hospital in Atlanta – a large provider of obstetric services with nearly 17,000 babies born at the hospital each year – discussed state and national quality initiatives, including the Maternal Mortality Review Committee, and shared maternal safety processes and practices.

Overview South Carolina suffers from a high rate of preterm birth, with 11.1 percent of women delivering prior to 37 weeks gestational age (according to the March of Dimes 2016 prematurity report card for South Carolina). If South Carolina were its own country, it would tie Madagascar for the 18th highest rate of preterm birth, higher than Bangladesh, Sudan and Iran. Infants born preterm are at risk for lifelong neurosensory and neurocognitive disabilities.

Overview In May 2014, the Ohio Governor’s Office of Health Transformation awarded MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland $395,170 in grant funding to reduce lengthy hospital stays and promote improved health outcomes for opiate-dependent mothers and their newborn babies. The funding was a part of a joint partnership between the Ohio Departments of Medicaid and Mental Health and Addiction Services called the Maternal Opiate Medical Support (MOMS) Project. The MOMS funding bolstered MetroHealth’s existing program to help mitigate the effects of neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS).

Overview Dartmouth–Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC) is New Hampshire’s only academic medical center and is headquartered on a 225-acre campus in the heart of the Upper Connecticut River Valley, in Lebanon, N.H. DHMC is New Hampshire’s only Level I trauma center, one of only three in northern New England, and it includes New Hampshire’s only air ambulance service.

Overview Catholic Medical Center (CMC) is a 330-bed, not-forprofit, full-service acute care hospital in Manchester, N.H. The hospital offers medical-surgical care with more than 26 subspecialties, inpatient and outpatient services, diagnostic imaging and a 30-bed 24-hour emergency department (ED). Norris Cotton Cancer Center at CMC offers medical oncology and infusion services, and the New England Heart and Vascular Institute provides advanced cardiology and cardiac surgery services to the region.

Overview Services specific to perinatal mental health are sparse in our state, and those that exist are often difficult to access. In 2003, Sinai Hospital of Baltimore launched the Perinatal Depression Outreach Program (PDOP) to improve infant and maternal well-being through the identification and treatment of maternal mental health struggles.

Overview As the leading health care organization in Greater New Haven, Yale-New Haven Hospital (YNHH) demonstrates its longtime commitment to families – especially mothers and children – by providing a variety of wide-ranging programs. Working within our diverse urban surroundings, YNHH partners with parents to support healthy children through initiatives both within the hospital and out in the community. These initiatives include: