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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 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
  • 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
  • Background:Women with intellectual and developmental disabilities face poorer reproductive and pregnancy outcomes partially due to health care inequity. Our objective was to conduct a scoping review of reproductive and pregnancy related health care among women with intellectual and developmental disabilities.Methods:We systematically reviewed three databases for keywords pertaining to pregnancy,…
    May 2022
    Maternal/Child Health, Reproductive/Sexual Health
  • 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 2022
    Maternal/Child Health, Substance Use and Misuse
  • 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
  • Adequate access to resources such as child care, nutritious foods, and housing can help people of reproductive age and their families lead healthy lives. However, these resources are not sufficiently available across all geographic areas and communities in the United States. People in these underserved communities—who have historically been disproportionately affected by rigid policies, minimal…
    January 2022
    Maternal/Child Health, Social/Structural Determinants
  • Health care organizations are increasingly making equitable care a strategic priority. Obstetric care represents a major area that needs improvement, as there are long-standing significant disparities in care and high rates of maternal morbidity and mortality. Artificial intelligence (AI) heralds the potential to improve care by employing novel approaches for prevention, risk mitigation,…
    December 2021
    Adverse Birth Outcomes, 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
  • 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 2021
    Maternal Morbidity and Mortality
  • Maternal safety refers to the safety of a person during pregnancy, childbirth, and the postnatal period. Transitions through pregnancy and birth can pose complex safety challenges, and normal physiologic changes can result in signs and symptoms that make it difficult to recognize and diagnose serious illness. Additionally, patients may not receive timely or adequate information about their health…
    October 2021
    Maternal 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 2021
    Maternal/Child Health, Isms and Phobias
  • Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are potentially traumatic events that occur in childhood. ACEs can include violence, abuse, and growing up in a family with mental health or substance use problems. Toxic stress from ACEs can change brain development and affect how the body responds to stress. ACEs are linked to chronic health problems, mental illness, and substance misuse in adulthood.…
    August 2021
    Maternal/Child Health
  • 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 2021
    Maternal/Child Health, Policy and Practice
  • The COVID-19 pandemic shined a light on the importance of universal access to affordable, high quality child care. For many racial and ethnic minorities in the United States, however, that access has been a long-standing issue. A 2017 CLASP report noted the structural racism that creates and perpetuates inequities and the fragmented U.S. child care system for young children ages birth to 5 years…
    August 2021
    Early Adulthood, Services & Programs
  • As Congress considers proposals to be included in the upcoming budget reconciliation package, a number of health care measures are on the table. Among these potential reforms are pathways to close the gap in Medicaid coverage that exists in the twelve states that declined to expand Medicaid after the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). A Supreme Court ruling in 2012 made Medicaid expansion…
    August 2021
    Maternal/Child Health, Reproductive/Sexual Health, Medicaid
  • 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 2021
    Maternal/Child Health, Substance Use and Misuse, Medicaid
  • The strong relationship between housing and health has been well-established, a reality that can be critically important for those who are pregnant. Affordable, quality housing—and where it is located—directly affect families’ physical and emotional well-being. Since October 2019, cross-sector “core teams” in nine states and Washington, D.C., have been working to address drivers of maternal and…
    June 2021
    COVID-19/Coronavirus, Maternal/Child Health, Social/Structural Determinants
  • 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

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