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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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  • 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
  • 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
  • Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are traumatic events that happen between ages 1 and 17. These negative experiences affect a child’s brain and health as they grow into adults. ACEs can lead to mental health or chronic health conditions. Lifelong treatment and management of ACEs help a person lead a fulfilling life. (author introduction)
    April 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
  • 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
  • Civic engagement is positively associated with important health and developmental benefits for participating adolescents and young adults. As illustrated by youth political participation, social activism, and rallies for racial justice during the COVID-19 pandemic, youth civic engagement is often inspired by and responsive to problems that are salient to a young person’s lived experiences.…
    April 2023
    Maternal/Child Health, Community-rooted/Participatory Research
  • The 2023 State of WIC report – supported by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation – centers infant feeding, economic equity, and modernization of the WIC program. It brings lessons learned in 2022 to the forefront of the conversation on reforms, innovation, and policy. This report assesses the infant formula crisis, USDA’s proposed food package rule, and WIC’s role in building a healthier future for all. (…
    February 2023
    Adolescent Health, Services & Programs
  • Twenty-five years ago, a watershed study on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) first established a relationship between childhood trauma and long-term health impacts that can last well into adulthood. Since then, numerous related studies have corroborated the association between ACEs and mental health and substance use disorders as well as diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and heart disease.…
    February 2023
    Maternal/Child Health
  • Importance: The prevalence of obesity among youths 2 to 19 years of age in the US from 2017 to 2018 was 19.3%; previous studies suggested that school lunch consumption was associated with increased obesity. The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 (HHFKA) strengthened nutritional standards of school-based meals. Objective: To evaluate the association between the HHFKA and youth body mass…
    February 2023
    Maternal/Child Health, Policy & Law
  • 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
  • Drawing on data from the National Survey of Children’s Health, this brief investigates the prevalence of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and disparities in ACEs exposure by children’s race, family income, age and health insurance coverage. The disproportionate impact of ACEs has deep ramifications on health equity due to related research showing that ACEs exposure is associated with…
    February 2023
    Maternal/Child Health, Social/Structural Determinants
  • 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
  • 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
  • Cerebral Palsy Guide provides free educational materials, financial resources, and support options for families affected by this condition and other birth injuries. (website description)
    January 2023
    Maternal/Child Health
  • 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
  • Many of us supporting evidence-based policymaking got involved with applied research in hopes that our findings might reach decision makers who would then use the evidence to improve people’s well-being. But sometimes it can be hard to know if and how our evidence is driving change. One of my greatest fears is that a report I worked on for years (that a funder spent millions of dollars supporting…
    December 2022
    Maternal/Child Health, Mental/Behavioral Health
  • 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
  • This report examines the impact of the lack of a national paid family leave program on maternal health disparities in the U.S. It highlights how the absence of paid leave contributes to poor health outcomes, particularly among racial and ethnic minorities and low-income women. The analysis, based on 2020 data from the CDC’s Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS), reveals that White…
    November 2022
    Maternal Morbidity and Mortality, Depression, Policy and Practice
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • Food and nutrition are literally life-giving and life-sustaining, yet parents and caretakers in the United States who rely on infant and specialty formulas for their loved ones’ health and nutritional needs face high prices and severe shortages. As of May 2022, 43 percent of formula products were out of stock nationwide—a massive increase from the average out-of-stock rate of between 2 percent…
    June 2022
    Maternal/Child Health, Social/Structural Determinants

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