Maternal and Child Health News

Postpartum hemorrhages occur in 1%-5% of women who have a baby.

The National Institutes of Health’s Office of Research on Women’s Health is accepting comments through Sept. 15 to assist with identifying research gaps and pitfalls in clinical practice related to women’s health issues.

In this Members in Action podcast, Aisha Syeda, program manager at the AHA, speaks with Nicole Lamborne, M.D., vice president of clinical operations for women’s services at Virtua Health in southern New Jersey, who shares how the health system identified gaps in maternal care and invested in laborists, nurses and evidence-based practices to lower C-section, hypertension, hemorrhage and sepsis rates.

Racial and ethnic disparities in U.S. maternal mortality may be larger than previously reported, according to a study published by the American Journal of Public Health.

The miscarriage rate for nearly 2,500 women who received at least one dose of the Pfizer or Moderna COVID-19 vaccines before or during the first 20 weeks of pregnancy was about 13%, similar to the 11%-16% expected miscarriage rate in the general population, according to an analysis of data from the v-safe pregnancy registry released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

St. Peter’s Health in Helena, Mont., partnered with Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies—the Montana Coalition to connect patients experiencing perinatal mood and anxiety disorders, and their families, with community resources to support their needs.

The Health Resources and Services Administration yesterday

Learn how AHA members are using digital solutions to improve perinatal care and outcomes for moms and their families in this series of seven-minute interviews with experts from AVIA, Providence St. Joseph Health, Boston Medical Center, Froedtert & The Medical College of Wisconsin, CommonSpirit Health, MedStar Health and Connecticut Children’s.

Sutter Health’s Pregnancy & Childbirth Services improved maternal health outcomes by reducing first-birth C-section rates, engaging mothers and their families through the process

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services launched the Infant Well-Child Visit Learning Collaborative, a webinar series and affinity group to help state Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Programs increase well-child visits for infants from birth to 12 months old.

The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health voted to advance to the full committee a number of AHA-supported bills focused on maternal health and social determinants of health.

The AHA invites hospitals and health systems to participate in the Better Maternal Outcomes Improvement Sprint, a free, six-week program beginning July 27 that will focus on using huddles, checklists and debriefs to improve maternal health outcomes and equity.

To mark National Minority Mental Health Awareness Month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shared new resources as part of its Hear Her campaign, which seeks to raise awareness of potentially life-threatening warning signs during and after pregnancy and improve communication between patients and their health care providers.

The National Institutes of Health announced it will award up to $400,000 to fund groups or individuals looking to design effective, innovative methods for identifying complication risks in first-time pregnancies.

The Infectious Diseases Clinical Research Consortium has begun enrolling up to 1,000 pregnant and postpartum individuals who have or will receive COVID-19 vaccine in a study to assess vaccine safety, immune response and transfer of antibodies to their infants, the National Institutes of Health announced.

In part two in a series of podcasts on rebuilding maternity services at a critical access hospital, officials from the UNC School of Medicine at Chapel Hill and Chatham Hospital UNC Health Care at Siler City, N.C., discuss how a plan was fulfilled to reintroduce safe and sustainable maternity services.

The National Institutes of Health yesterday reported that a healthy diet from around the time of conception through the second trimester may reduce for women the risk of several common pregnancy complications.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that rates of breastfeeding initiation have increased during the past decade but racial and ethnic disparities in breastfeeding persist.

Women are more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety disorders during pregnancy and into the first postpartum year than at any other time in their lives, writes Margaret Howard, division director of women's behavioral health at Providence, R.I.-based Women & Infants Hospital and executive director of women’s behavioral health at Care New England.

In this first of two AHA podcasts on rebuilding maternity services at critical access hospitals, officials from the UNC School of Medicine at Chapel Hill and Chatham Hospital UNC Health Care at Siler City, N.C., discuss the strategic need and clinical case for maternity services at their small, rural community.