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The Partners for Advancing Health Equity (P4HE) Resource Library is a virtual portal containing action-oriented health equity research, practice, and policies. The library aims to increase equity in health by offering free access to field-tested, evidence-informed and evidence-based programs strategies and high-quality research.


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  • The National Indian Health Board (NIHB) is committed to advocating for the health and well-being of Indigenous communities. One of our key initiatives focuses on addressing adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), which are traumatic events occurring during childhood. Research indicates that Indigenous children experience higher ACEs and collective trauma, which needs to be addressed through…
    November 2024
    Maternal/Child Health
  • Black and Brown maternal health disparities are rooted in historical health policies limiting power and reproductive decision-making in the United States. From anti-Black racism in the field of obstetrics and gynecology and policies such as the Sheppard–Towner Act of 1921 in the American South, to xenophobia through the forced sterilization of non-English speaking mothers in the 20th and 21st…
    February 2024
    Maternal/Child Health, Policy and Practice
  • The statistics around Black maternal health in the United States remain unsettling. In the U.S., Black women are three to four times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women. Black women are also two times more likely to experience severe maternal morbidity and 1.5 times more likely to have a preterm delivery, compared to their white counterparts. There are various…
    January 2024
    Maternal/Child Health, Policy and Practice
  • This brief is part of a larger effort by Child Trends researchers to expand knowledge about Black children and families. This effort includes continued work on Black family cultural assets and the development of a new multi-year applied research agenda on Black children and families. While sometimes prioritizing adults within Black families and sometimes prioritizing children, the goals of this…
    January 2024
    Maternal/Child Health
  • Purpose: Perceived Social Support (PSS) can impact breastfeeding behaviors, and a lack of PSS potentially contributes to disparities in breastfeeding rates for African American women (AA). Objectives were to describe PSS at two timepoints and test associations between PSS and breastfeeding intensity for AA.Methods: Data are from a feasibility trial of breastfeeding support among AA. The Hughes…
    May 2023
    Maternal/Child Health
  • Black Maternal Health Week is recognized each year from April 11-17 to bring attention and action in improving Black maternal health. Everyone can play a role in working to prevent pregnancy-related deaths and improving maternal health outcomes. (author introduction) #P4HEwebinarMay2022
    April 2023
    Maternal Morbidity and Mortality
  • Culturally competent healthcare is person-centered: it considers the person's preferences as well as their unique experience from a cultural perspective. This perspective is particularly important in light of longtime racism and inequities experienced by people from historically marginalized groups. (author introduction) #P4HEwebinarOctober2024
    February 2023
    Maternal/Child Health, Policy and Practice
  • Our Mission: NBEC creates transnational solutions that optimize Black maternal, infant, sexual, and reproductive wellbeing. We shift systems and culture through training, research, technical assistance, policy, advocacy, and community-centered collaboration. Our Vision: All Black mamas, their babies, and their villages THRIVE. (abbreviated author introduction) #P4HEwebinarMay2022
    January 2023
    Maternal/Child Health, Policy and Practice
  • After more than a century of research and debate, the scientific community has yet to reach agreement on the principal causes of racialized disparities in population health. This debate currently centers on the degree to which "race residuals" are a result of unobserved differences in the social context or unobserved differences in population characteristics. The comparative study of native and…
    July 2022
    Maternal/Child Health
  • From 2014 to 2015, W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF) partnered with the University of New Mexico evaluation team to conduct a study to examine if and how the Foundation's investments in the strategies of folic acid initiative, home visiting, doulas, breastfeeding peer counselors and baby-friendly hospitals were improving maternal-child health in WKKF's priority places in New Mexico. One key finding…
    June 2022
    Maternal/Child Health
  • This infographic portrays how pregnancy-related mortality ratios compare based on race/ethnicity, as well as how age and education level affect health inequities. #P4HEwebinarMay2022
    April 2022
    Maternal Morbidity and Mortality
  • In this research note, I estimate one component of the mortality impact of denying all wanted induced abortions in the United States. This estimate quantifies the magnitude of an increase in pregnancy-related deaths that would occur solely because of the greater mortality risk of continuing a pregnancy rather than having a legal induced abortion. Using published statistics on pregnancy-related…
    December 2021
    Maternal Morbidity and Mortality, Abortion Access
  • The United States has the worst maternal health outcomes among high-income nations – despite spending $111 billion yearly on maternal and infant care. People of color, particularly Black and Indigenous birthing people† and parents, bear the brunt of this fundamental failing. Today, there is more recognition than ever of the influence of structural forces on maternal and infant health and a…
    December 2021
    COVID-19/Coronavirus, Maternal Morbidity and Mortality, Advocacy
  • To effectively support asthma self-management among children most at risk for poor outcomes, it is important to examine potential disparities in parents' asthma-related knowledge. This study draws on baseline data collected from a randomized controlled trial to analyze how knowledge of asthma self-management varies by sociodemographic characteristics in a racially and economically diverse sample…
    November 2021
    Asthma, Adolescent Health, Education
  • Structural racism causes significant inequities in the diagnosis of perinatal and maternal mental health disorders and access to perinatal and maternal mental health treatment. Black birthing populations are particularly burdened by disjointed systems of care for mental health. To identify strategies to address racism and inequities in maternal and infant mental health care, we interviewed ten…
    October 2021
    Maternal/Child Health, Isms and Phobias
  • Maternal health outcomes in the United States have reached crisis levels compared with the rest of the world, and they’re getting worse. Preterm birth rates have increased in the U.S. for the past 5 years, and the number of birthing people who experience Severe Maternal Morbidity (SMM) has also continued to grow. These poor outcomes, however, impact some more than others. Black birthing people…
    June 2021
    Maternal/Child Health, Medicaid
  • The problem: untreated maternal mental health means worse health outcomes for moms and babies. The mental health of mothers in the United States is in crisis. This harms not only their own health, but also that of their infants. Maternal mental health (MMH) conditions are relatively common, affecting one in five women.1 When left undiagnosed and untreated, MMH conditions can lead to long-term…
    June 2021
    Maternal Morbidity and Mortality
  • Substantial research documents health consequences of neighborhood disadvantage. Patterns of residential mobility that differ by race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status (SES) may sort non-Hispanic (NH) Black and low-SES families into disadvantaged neighborhoods. In this study, we leverage a sibling-linked dataset to track residential mobility among birthing persons between pregnancies and…
    May 2021
    Maternal/Child Health, Healthy Housing
  • The reproductive justice framework holds much promise for guiding research that can contribute to social change. Its limited integration and use in social psychology therefore represents a missed opportunity for justice-oriented social researchers. The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the reproductive justice framework and demonstrate its value for social psychologists…
    May 2021
    Maternal Morbidity and Mortality, Abortion Access
  • Medicaid has a long history of serving pregnant women, but many women are not eligible for Medicaid before pregnancy or after sixty days postpartum. We used data for new mothers with Medicaid-covered prenatal care in 2015–18 from forty-three states participating in the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS) to describe patterns of perinatal uninsurance and health outcomes of women…
    April 2021
    Illness/Disease/Injury/Wellbeing, Maternal/Child Health, Depression, Medicaid
  • A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study published in September found that pregnant women, especially Black and Latinx, are at increased risk of severe illness from COVID-19 compared to non-pregnant individuals. They are more likely to be admitted to intensive care units (ICU), receive invasive ventilation, and are at increased risk of death.In response to COVID-19, several states…
    November 2020
    COVID-19/Coronavirus, Maternal Morbidity and Mortality
  • The inequities laid bare by COVID-19 underscore the importance of states’ efforts to develop policies and interventions to address all health disparities. Systemic racism, a driver of these inequities, also fuels disparities in maternal morbidity and mortality – Black women are four-times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than White women. States are on the frontlines, working…
    October 2020
    Adverse Birth Outcomes, Maternal Morbidity and Mortality
  • Maternal morbidity and mortality (MMM) is a significant problem in the USA, with about 700 maternal deaths every year and an estimated 50,000 "near misses." Disparities in MMM by race are marked; black women are disproportionately affected. We use Urie Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory to examine the root causes of racial disparities in MMM at the individual (microsystem), interpersonal…
    July 2020
    Maternal Morbidity and Mortality, Medicaid, Racism
  • The coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and related policies have led to an unequal distribution of morbidity and mortality in the U.S. For Black women and birthing people, endemic vulnerabilities and disparities may exacerbate deleterious COVID-19 impacts. Historical and ongoing macro-level policies and forces over time have induced disproportionately higher rates of maternal morbidity and…
    July 2020
    COVID-19/Coronavirus, Maternal/Child Health, Social/Structural Determinants, Isms and Phobias
  • Research in Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) has increased in recent years with hundreds of studies finding a strong and consistent relationship between child adversity and numerous public health outcomes (see the ACE Pyramid in Figure 1). According to the CDC, ACEs are potentially traumatic events that occur in childhood as well as the conditions in the child’s environment that can undermine…
    July 2020
    Maternal/Child Health, Racism

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