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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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- In the United States, most mothers work during pregnancy. Yet, until the passage of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act in 2022, pregnant employees did not have a right to reasonable accommodations to work under safe conditions. This law is expected to increase employment among pregnant women, making it critical to understand the effects of work during pregnancy on health and the potential benefits…July 2024Maternal/Child Health, Policy and Practice
- In recent years, there have been alarming onslaughts on women’s right to health care. These attacks have taken various forms, including legislative measures that restrict access to reproductive health care services resulting in rising maternal morbidity and mortality, as well as attempts to defund organizations that provide these services. While the battle for such health rights rages on, another…June 2024Maternal/Child Health
- Birth outcomes nationwide are characterized by wide disparities in maternal morbidity and mortality. One potential solution to mitigating these disparities has been to increase access to doulas—traditionally defined as individuals who provide emotional, informational, and physical support around and during the time of birth. However, support with navigating challenges throughout the entire…March 2024Maternal/Child Health, Policy and Practice
- Background: Nourishing Beginnings is an integrated referral and service delivery model supporting Medicaid-eligible pregnant individuals by providing increased nutritional food access throughout pregnancy up to three months postpartum, through community health workers (CHW), who simultaneously address and provide support for social service needs of the client. Methods: To study the impact of…October 2023Maternal/Child Health, Medicaid
- A source of support during birth could be the solution to negative outcomes for the mother and her baby. To improve the birthing experience and increase positive birthing outcomes, sources of support during pregnancy should be evaluated and understood. The goal of this review was to synthesize the existing literature on how doulas might improve birth outcomes. This scoping review also aimed to…May 2023Maternal/Child Health, Policy and Practice
- In the United States, recreational drugs continue to play a prominent role in drug use disorders and fatalities. Included in this category are psychostimulant drugs such as cocaine, which is well-known for its euphoric effects and abuse potential. Cocaine produces euphoria by blocking the reuptake of neurotransmitters, that is, dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin. Although cocaine produces…May 2023Substance Use and Misuse
- 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 2023Maternal/Child Health
- Background Although preventable through screening, cervical cancer incidence and mortality are higher among American Indian and Alaska Native women (AIAN) than White women. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act's (ACA) Medicaid expansions may uniquely impact access and use of cervical cancer screening among AIAN women and ultimately alleviate this disparity. Methods Using Medicaid…January 2023Cancer, Medicaid
- The Affordable Care Act (ACA) Medicaid expansions increased preconception and postpartum insurance coverage among low-income birthing people, leading to greater use of outpatient care. In this study we evaluated whether the expansions affected rates of postpartum hospitalization. Our analyses took advantage of underused longitudinal hospital data from the period 2010–17 to examine…January 2023Adverse Birth Outcomes, Medicaid
- Importance: The number of people living in unaffordable housing (relative to income) is projected to continue increasing as housing cost inflation outpaces incomes in the US. Although reproductive-aged women have disproportionately high housing costs, particularly around the time of childbirth, data on associations between housing costs and maternal health and the role of publicly supported…November 2022Maternal Morbidity and Mortality, Healthy Housing
- As of April 2021, nine states and the District of Columbia had enacted state-specific paid family leave (PFL) programs, offering partial wage replacement to parents after the birth of a child. The Biden Administration also proposed the development of a national solution through the American Families Plan. Despite these advances, concerns with workforce disruptions and economic costs have hindered…November 2022Mental/Behavioral Health, Paid Family Leave
- Introduction: States' approaches to addressing prenatal substance use are widely heterogeneous, ranging from supportive policies that enhance access to substance use disorder (SUD) treatment to punitive policies that criminalize prenatal substance use. We studied the effect of these prenatal substance use policies (PSUPs) on medications for opioid use disorder (OUD) treatment, including…September 2022Maternal/Child Health, Substance Use and Misuse
- Person-centered contraceptive access benefits reproductive autonomy, sexual wellbeing, menstrual regulation, and other preventive health. However, contraceptive access varies by social and geographic position, with policies either perpetuating or alleviating health inequities. We describe geographic and time-trend variation in an index from fewer (less expansive) to greater (more expansive)…June 2022Contraceptive Use/Access, Policy and Practice
- Community-based participatory strategies are a promising approach to addressing disparities in community health outcomes. This paper details the efforts of Siteman Cancer Center to achieve breast health equity over the past 15+ years. We begin by describing the activities and successes arising from our breast health community partnerships including identifying priorities, developing…May 2022Cancer
- We study the effect of punitive and priority treatment policies relating to illicit substance use during pregnancy on the rate of neonatal drug withdrawal syndrome, low birth weight, low gestational age, and prenatal care use. Punitive policies criminalize prenatal substance use, or define prenatal substance exposure as child maltreatment in child welfare statutes or as grounds for termination of…April 2022Maternal/Child Health, Substance Use and Misuse
- Few studies have illustrated how racism influences Black women’s use of reproductive health care services. This article presents findings of a collaborative study conducted by a research team and a reproductive justice organization to understand Black women’s concerns with sexual and reproductive health services. The qualitative research was conducted with Black women living in Georgia and North…February 2022Reproductive/Sexual Health, Policy and Practice, Racism
- 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 2021Maternal Morbidity and Mortality, Abortion Access
- Importance Severe maternal morbidity (SMM) is a major risk factor for maternal mortality, yet little is known about geographic variation in SMM or factors associated with geographical variation at the local level. Municipal governments incur substantial expenditures providing services that are an essential part of residents’ lives, but associations between municipal expenditures and…November 2021Maternal Morbidity and Mortality
- 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 2021Maternal/Child Health, Isms and Phobias
- The United States has the highest maternal mortality rate among developed countries and experiences substantial disparities in maternal health outcomes, particularly by race and ethnicity. The most recent national report on maternal mortality in the US reveals a significant increase in the national maternal mortality rate in 2019 compared to 2018 (20.1 and 17.4 deaths per 100,000 live births…August 2021Maternal/Child Health, Policy and Practice
- Intersectionality is a widely adopted theoretical orientation in the field of women and gender studies. Intersectionality comes from the work of black feminist scholars and activists. Intersectionality argues identities such as gender, race, sexuality, and other markers of difference intersect and reflect large social structures of oppression and privilege, such as sexism, racism, and…August 2021Policy and Practice, Isms and Phobias
- Background: Medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD) improve outcomes for pregnant women and infants. Our primary aim was to examine disparities in maternal MOUD receipt by family sociodemographic characteristics. Methods: This retrospective cohort study included mother-infant dyads with Medicaid-covered deliveries in Tennessee from 2009 to 2016. First, we examined family sociodemographic…July 2021Maternal/Child Health, Substance Use and Misuse, Medicaid
- 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 2021Maternal/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 2021Maternal 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 2021Illness/Disease/Injury/Wellbeing, Maternal/Child Health, Depression, Medicaid
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