Establishing Vigilant Care

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has updated its recommendation for pregnant people to get vaccinated against Covid-19.

BMMA believes that improving maternal mortality and morbidity data quality is essential to addressing the maternal health crisis in the US--a crisis that disproportionately impacts Black women. Furthermore, in order to optimize data quality, communities most impacted must be meaningfully engaged throughout the data collection, analysis, and policy recommendation phases. These actions are critical to eliminating racial disparities in maternal health outcomes and inequities within and beyond the health care system.

In 2020 they released, A Community Perspective on Maternal Mortality Review Committees, an issue brief centering the perspective of community-based organizations on improving the effectiveness of Maternal Mortality Review Committees (MMRCs), as well as recommendations to states on improving the composition and implementation of MMRCs

Pregnancy is a wonderful time of growth, anticipation, and development for you and your baby. Unfortunately for pregnant women, the things we love before the baby came along can be harmful to your growing child. Everything from your morning cup of coffee to soft cheese and seafood can potentially be dangerous.

Trust is the foundation for everything we do. But what do we do when it's broken? In an eye-opening talk, Harvard Business School professor Frances Frei gives a crash course in trust: how to build it, maintain it and rebuild it 

UCLA Fielding School of Public Health led-research finds that criminalizing immigrant policies were associated with higher rates of preterm birth for Black women born outside the U.S.

"According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, each year in the United States, approximately 700 people die during pregnancy or in the year after. Another 50,000 women each year experience severe pregnancy complications. Black women are far more likely than White women to experience death during childbirth or severe pregnancy complications. Multiple factors contribute to these disparities, such as variation in quality healthcare, underlying chronic conditions and implicit bias."

• Kangaroo mother care, which involves skin-to-skin contact and exclusive breastfeeding, significantly improves a premature or low birthweight baby’s chances of survival
• Starting kangaroo mother care immediately after birth has the potential to save up to 150,000 more lives each year, compared with the current recommendation of starting it only once a baby is stable
• Mother-Newborn Intensive Care Units (ICUs) will be critical to support the mother, or a surrogate, in providing this immediate, ongoing skin-to-skin contact from birth. 

Birth rates are declining due to increased infertility—but most people who get access to IVF are white. To what extent is cost preventing Black and brown parents from seeking fertility treatment?