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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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  • Objective: To synthesize the literature on associations between social determinants of health and pregnancy-related mortality and morbidity in the US and to highlight opportunities for intervention and future research.Data Sources: We performed a systematic search using Medline Ovid, CINAHL, Popline, Scopus and ClinicalTrials.gov (1990–2018) using MeSH terms related to maternal…
    April 2021
    Maternal Morbidity and Mortality, Social/Structural Determinants
  • 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
  • Issue: In the United States, high spending on maternity care does not translate to better maternal health outcomes. People of color, particularly Black and Indigenous women, are at heightened risk for negative outcomes.Goal: To examine models for delivering maternity care that could improve outcomes and reduce racial inequities in maternal morbidity and mortality.Methods: Review of research…
    March 2021
    Maternal/Child Health, Policy and Practice
  • Since the World Health Organization launched its commission on the social determinants of health (SDOH) over a decade ago, a large body of research has proven that social determinants—defined as the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age—are significant drivers of disease risk and susceptibility within clinical care and public health systems. Unfortunately, the term has…
    February 2021
    Maternal/Child Health, Social/Structural Determinants
  • In the United States, despite significant investment and the efforts of multiple maternal health stakeholders, maternal mortality (MM) has reemerged since 1987 and MM disparity has persisted since 1935. This article provides a review of the U.S. MM trajectory throughout its history up to its current state. From this longitudinal perspective, MM trends and themes are evaluated within a global…
    February 2021
    Maternal Morbidity and Mortality
  • This data and its corresponding visualizations illustrate the average age that a newborn would likely live to, if he/she were affected by the sex- and age-specific death rates linked to the time of his/her birth, for a specific year and country/territory/geographic area. This is an important measurement since life expectancy at birth points to a population's overall mortality level.
    December 2020
    Maternal/Child Health, Aging and Life Course
  • In partnership with the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, the National Academy for State Health Policy (NASHP) recently held a virtual roundtable discussion of state officials to discuss maternal health initiatives in Illinois and Georgia and explore strategies to improve maternal health outcomes for Medicaid enrollees. Despite spending more than other developed nations on hospital-provided…
    November 2020
    Adverse Birth Outcomes, Maternal Morbidity and Mortality
  • 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
  • The research team is evaluating how different prenatal substance use policies (PSUPs) impact (1) how systems, such as child welfare, criminal justice and healthcare providers, respond; (2) maternal substance use and healthcare behaviors; and (3) maternal and newborn health. The researchers are also examining whether the policies have differential impact based on the mother’s race and ethnicity. (…
    October 2020
    Adverse Birth Outcomes, Substance Use and Misuse
  • Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are common and they can have lasting, negative effects on health and well-being. They can also negatively impact education and job opportunities.Children and families thrive when they have access to safe, stable, nurturing relationships and environments. These relationships and environments are essential to creating positive childhood experiences and…
    September 2020
    Maternal/Child Health, Policy and Practice
  • The United States is the only developed nation that fails to guarantee any kind of paid leave to workers. We lack a national paid family and medical leave (PFML) policy that encompasses: (1) paid parental leave, which would apply to both mothers and fathers after the birth of a child, adoption of a child, or fostering a child; (2) paid family leave (PFL), which would apply to caregivers of a…
    September 2020
    Maternal/Child Health, Paid Family Leave
  • 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
  • Objectives: Despite improvements in infant mortality rates (IMR) in the United States, racial gaps in IMR remain and may be driven by both structural racism and place. This study assesses the relationship between structural racism and race-specific IMR and the role of urban-rural classification on race-specific IMR and Black/White racial gaps in IMR. Methods: We conducted an analysis of…
    July 2020
    Infant Mortality
  • 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
  • Objective: Sleep disturbances during pregnancy are associated with gestational diabetes and excessive weight gain. Diet could potentially play a role in these relationships, yet examinations of sleep and diet in African American pregnant populations are scarce. Methods: The study population includes pregnant African American women from Detroit, MI (n=53). At the baseline study…
    March 2020
    Maternal/Child Health
  • One in five Americans lives in a rural area, including about 18 million women of reproductive age, but key indicators, including mortality figures, show that the health of mothers and children in these communities lags behind that of their urban peers and is worsening. Nationwide, child mortality rates have declined over the past decade, but recent research shows that improvement among infants…
    February 2020
    Maternal/Child Health
  • Pregnancy-related deaths among American women have risen markedly over the past 30 years, despite an overall downward trend worldwide. Many of these deaths are preventable, and the risk remains three to four times higher for black women than white women at all levels of income or education. Maternal mortality—a key measure of health care quality—is typically defined as the death of a woman…
    January 2020
    Maternal Morbidity and Mortality
  • There is a well-established association between income and child health. We examine the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program, which provides cash assistance to low-income children with disabilities, to assess how this relationship arises. We use a large database of Medicaid administrative records to estimate the causal effects of SSI receipt on children’s health, using a regression…
    January 2020
    Maternal/Child Health, Medicaid
  • The project team is leveraging unique U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) policies and the DoD’s robust administrative records to examine whether parental support policies, such as maternity and paternity leave and subsidized childcare improve parents’ health outcomes. To study whether these policies can improve parental health, the team is taking advantage of changes to DoD parental supports…
    December 2019
    Early Adulthood
  • Last month, I had the opportunity to join a passionate panel of advocates and experts at the inaugural TIME 100 Health Summit, to discuss both the strategy and urgency needed to transform women’s health. I walked away with the overarching feeling that our ability to improve women’s health outcomes depends on our will to do so, as much as it depends on the health tools and services that we must…
    November 2019
    Maternal/Child Health
  • Introduction: Adverse childhood experiences, such as violence victimization, substance misuse in the household, or witnessing intimate partner violence, have been linked to leading causes of adult morbidity and mortality. Therefore, reducing adverse childhood experiences is critical to avoiding multiple negative health and socioeconomic outcomes in adulthood.Methods: Behavioral Risk Factor…
    November 2019
    Maternal/Child Health, Policy and Practice
  • The rising trend in pregnancy-related deaths during the past 2 decades in the United States stands out among other high-income countries where pregnancy-related deaths are declining. Cardiomyopathy and other cardiovascular conditions, hemorrhage, and other chronic medical conditions are all important causes of death. Unintentional death from violence, overdose, and self-harm are emerging causes…
    October 2019
    Maternal Morbidity and Mortality
  • Practitioners in maternal and child health (MCH) make it a priority to solve complex public health problems facing women, children, adolescents, and their families across the life course. The field of MCH has made significant advances in the past century, including the expansion of family planning methods and services, the eradication of once-common deadly diseases such as polio, and innovations…
    May 2019
    Maternal/Child Health

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