We Need to Talk about Maternal Mortality
In recent weeks there have been numerous articles in publications including the New York Times, TIME and the Huffington Post, to name a few, about the topic of maternal mortality in the United States. Our mission at Every Mother Counts is to make pregnancy and childbirth safer for every mother, everywhere. We inform, engage and mobilize audiences to take actions and raise funds that support maternal health programs around the world. Being a part of the conversation is the first step and I’m pleased that this topic is top of mind.
At Every Mother Counts we are working to educate the public about these issues and dramatically reduce the maternal mortality ratio in the United States and globally. In our film series, “Giving Birth in America,” we highlight some of the challenges and solutions American women face that are contributing to the rise in maternal mortality today. We believe that every mother deserves the highest standard of compassionate healthcare to ensure safe outcomes for herself and her baby and we will continue our work until they do.
The U.S. spends more money on healthcare than any other industrialized country, yet three women die every day from pregnancy and childbirth-related conditions. The U.S. is also the only developed country where maternal mortality has been consistently on the rise since 1990.[1] An additional 60,000 women will come close to losing their lives — what we call a “near-miss” associated with a childbirth-related complication, such as postpartum hemorrhage or eclampsia. When these complications don’t result in death they can lead to hysterectomies or other interventions with lifelong implications.[2] The shocking fact is that most of these deaths and disabilities are entirely preventable.
The medical-legal, hospital, and insurance barriers that are out of sync with women’s needs contribute to the United States’ high maternal mortality rate. We also have political, racial and systemic barriers that put women of color in particular at risk, and low-income women left with lower quality care or receiving no prenatal care at all. There are ways to better support pregnant women in our country and we must take action.
The U.S. has yet to embrace what countries across Europe have long realized — a lower-cost midwifery model of care to manage the majority of births, which are low-risk and lead to better outcomes for mothers and babies with a lower price tag. Around the world, health systems that value and support women throughout their pregnancies and well into the post-partum period have proven to produce healthier moms, babies, and societies. The statistics speak for themselves.
There are proven solutions to most of these challenges but where do we begin? Expanding Medicaid is critical, but so is the need to raise Medicaid reimbursement rates for doulas, community health workers and midwives, and doctors. Low Medicaid reimbursement rates lead to a dearth of providers available to provide quality, individualized care. Those providers who do give this level of care are overworked, underpaid and are spending too much of their time haggling with managed care and insurance organizations for reimbursement to sustain themselves.
The acknowledgment that the U.S. has a maternal health problem is the first step and what is needed is a commitment from us all to reverse these statistics. We will see these numbers come down by systematically reviewing maternal deaths, pushing for a Medicaid waiver for doula care, and changing hospital policies to enable and support VBACs and natural progression of labor.
Please sign this petition calling for full medicaid reimbursement of midwives and doula services for mothers in all 50 states here.
Every mother deserves the highest standard of compassionate medical care to ensure safe outcomes for herself and her baby.
Christy Turlington Burns is a global maternal health advocate, founder of Every Mother Counts, and the director/producer of the 2010 documentary “No Woman, No Cry.”
[1] WHO: Trends in Maternal Mortality : 1990 to 2015
[2] Creanga, AA, Berg, CJ, Ko, JY, Farr, SL, Tong, VT, Bruce, FC, Callaghan, WM. Maternal mortality and morbidity in the United States: Where Are We Now? Journal of Women’s Health (Larchmt). 2014 Jan;23(1):3–9. doi: 10.1089/jwh.2013.4617.
