Dear Member of Congress:
As one of over a million members of MomsRising, I am writing to ask you to help end the crisis of Black moms dying at disparate rates across the country from preventable, pregnancy-related complications before you leave at the end of the year!
The United States is currently the most dangerous place to give birth in the developed world, with major racial disparities where Black women lose their lives at 3 to 4 times the rate of white women due to maternity-related causes, independent of age, economic background, or education, a fact that has gone unchanged for several decades.
This is where the Congressional Black Maternal Health Caucus’s Momnibus Act will make a difference. It is the most comprehensive legislative effort yet to address the crisis of Black maternal mortality in the U.S. and will build on existing legislation in Congress to address every dimension of America’s maternal health crisis.
This package of legislation is composed of twelve individual bills sponsored by members of the Black Maternal Health Caucus and Senator Corey Booker. The legislation will take historic steps forward to:
- Advance policies to address the risks to pregnant people during this pandemic;
- Make critical investments in social determinants of health that influence maternal health outcomes, like housing, transportation, and nutrition;
- Provide funding to community-based organizations that are working to improve maternal health outcomes particularly for Black women;
- Comprehensively study the unique maternal health risks facing women veterans and invest in VA maternity care coordination;
- Grow and diversify the perinatal workforce to ensure that every mom in America receives maternity care and support from people she can trust;
- Improve data collection processes and quality measures to better understand the causes of the maternal health crisis in the United States and inform solutions to address them;
- Invest in maternal mental health care and substance use disorder treatments;
- Improve maternal health care and support for incarcerated women;
- Invest in digital tools like telehealth to improve maternal health outcomes in underserved areas;
- Promote innovative payment models to incentivize high-quality maternity care and continuity of health insurance coverage from pregnancy through labor and delivery and up to 1 year postpartum;
- Address the impacts of climate change on maternal and infant health outcomes;
- Increase maternal immunization rates and promote the health of moms and babies during COVID-19 and beyond.
We want moms to go home with their babies and watch their children and families thrive. Too many families and communities have already borne the brunt of needlessly losing moms to preventable causes. We urge you to enact The Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act before you adjourn to comprehensively address our nation's Black maternal health crisis and save moms.