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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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  • 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 2023
    Maternal/Child Health, Policy and Practice
  • Highlights:Midwives, incorporated fully into U.S. maternity care systems, could reduce perinatal health disparities and help address provider workforce shortages.The integration of midwifery care as a standard feature of maternity care services varies dramatically across states; outcomes for mothers and infants tend to be better in states with high levels of integration.Although the demand for…
    May 2023
    Maternal/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 2023
    Substance 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 2023
    Maternal/Child Health
  • For more than a decade, the Network for Public Health Law has worked with key stakeholders across the United States to advance law and policy that supports safer, healthier, stronger and more equitable communities. The Network provides technical assistance, trainings, evidence-based tools and resources, and connects public health policymakers, officials, lawyers, and practitioners as well as…
    April 2023
    Reproductive/Sexual Health
  • Desegregation-focused housing policies aimed at reducing disparities in neighborhood conditions may also reduce disparities in health outcomes. This paper examines the effects of one such policy on the health of pregnant people and their newborn infants. Specifically, it studies the impact of Massachusetts Chapter 40B, a major civil rights-era housing policy that increases the supply of…
    April 2023
    Maternal/Child Health, Healthy Housing
  • 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 2023
    Cancer, Medicaid
  • Maternal health disparities have many causes, but disparate social conditions and a lack of prenatal care or substandard maternal care are often key factors. Community-based maternal care models can help to narrow the disparities in maternal health outcomes by providing expanded prenatal, childbirth and postpartum support that is respectful and culturally relevant to at-risk women. These models…
    January 2023
    Maternal/Child Health, Policy and Practice
  • SisterSong is a Southern based, national membership organization; our purpose is to build an effective network of individuals and organizations to improve institutional policies and systems that impact the reproductive lives of marginalized communities. SisterSong defines Reproductive Justice as the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the…
    January 2023
    Reproductive Justice, Racism
  • Self-care is a broad-based concept and can encompass numerous actions that are intended to empower the individual to enhance their own health. Self-management approaches are one component of self-care. Given the nature of the medical abortion process, it is possible for women to manage the process by themselves in whole or part. While individuals may conduct some or all elements related to the…
    January 2023
    Illness/Disease/Injury/Wellbeing, Reproductive Justice
  • 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 2023
    Adverse Birth Outcomes, Medicaid
  • The way a society treats people who give birth says a lot about that society. Tragically, the gender- and race-based biases in American society are evident in health outcomes surrounding pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum recovery.Our country is in the midst of a maternal health crisis. The United States has the highest maternal mortality rate in the developed world and 60 percent of those…
    December 2022
    Maternal/Child Health, Policy and Practice
  • Preterm births in the U.S. have reached the highest level in 15 years, and disproportionately are experienced by  Black and Native American mothers and infants, according to a new report from WKKF grantee March of Dimes. “Our country, unfortunately … is one of the least safe places to give birth and be born,” said Dr. Zsakeba Henderson, March of Dimes’ senior vice president and interim chief…
    November 2022
    Maternal/Child Health
  • 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 2022
    Maternal 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 2022
    Mental/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 2022
    Maternal/Child Health, Substance Use and Misuse
  • This report takes a holistic view of perinatal health and, as people progress through different stages of development, puts it in context as a developmental precursor to later indicators of wellness, including birth outcomes, postpartum wellness, and subsequent child development. The five domains of social determinants of health and well-being serve as the framework for this report:…
    July 2022
    COVID-19/Coronavirus, Maternal/Child Health, Social/Structural Determinants
  • The Supreme Court of the United States has made their decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overturning Roe v. Wade and jeopardizing the rights of millions of Americans. This decision allows states to reduce and criminalize access and support for abortion care. In the months and years ahead, it’s very likely that abortion will become entirely unavailable and criminalized in at…
    June 2022
    Reproductive/Sexual 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
  • The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) is a widely used program. Previous research shows that WIC improves birth outcomes, but evidence about impacts on children and families is limited. We use a regression discontinuity leveraging an age five when children become ineligible for WIC and examine nutritional and laboratory outcomes for adults and children…
    June 2022
    Maternal/Child Health
  • 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 2022
    Contraceptive 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 2022
    Cancer
  • This Webinar included a discussion of pregnancy-related mortality through the lens of abortion access and other policy decisions like Medicaid expansion. This included discussions of community- and culturally- centered birthing work and the need for cross-sector collaboration in this space.#P4HEwebinarMay2022 
    May 2022
    Maternal Morbidity and Mortality, Policy and Practice
  • As the AAMC Center for Health Justice prepares to host the inaugural Maternal Health Incubator later this month to address the longstanding trends of racial and ethnic health inequities for women and birthing people, hearing directly from those who have given birth is of high importance. In March and April 2022, the AAMC Center for Health Justice polled a nationally representative sample of…
    May 2022
    Maternal/Child Health
  • This episode of On the Evidence features guests Kara Zivin, Laurie Zephyrin, and Adriana Kohler, who discuss untreated maternal mental health conditions, why it’s important to estimate the economic costs of not treating these conditions, and what further evidence will help us fully understand the negative impacts of untreated maternal mental health conditions and the potential positive effects of…
    May 2022
    Maternal/Child Health, Mental/Behavioral Health

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