Plans to Address Maternal Health Disparities

The United States has the greatest maternal death rate of any developed country, more than doubling that of its peers, with severe disparities facing women of color and rural women. With this in mind, the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently awarded more than $65 million to 35 HRSA-funded Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) to pilot new, scalable innovations to address the maternal mortality crisis.

Piedmont Health Services (PHS), a multisite FQHC whose decades-long collaboration with UNC Family Medicine has focused on the care of rural and other medically underserved populations, as well as the training of medical professionals in community settings, was awarded $1.75 million to combat maternal health disparities among the large minority populations it serves. PHS has enlisted the help of UNC Family Medicine and the Chatham County Public Health Department to fund a multi-pronged quality improvement project that will highlight the voices and lived experiences of those affected by these injustices.

The project will focus on perinatal interdisciplinary care team (IDT) workflows to improve the timeliness and comprehensiveness of postpartum care, a virtual maternal-fetal medicine (MFM) specialty consultation service for women with high-risk conditions served at PHS rural community health centers, and support for community doula training and the development of a community doula collaborative in rural Chatham County, North Carolina.

PHS CEO Brian Toomey, MSW, regards FQHCs as playing a vital role in reducing maternal health inequities.

“I am so pleased to see two awards from HRSA’s Bureau of Primary Health Care come to North Carolina – C.W. Williams in Charlotte was also funded – and believe this work can play an important part in supporting the goals of the NCDHHS’ Perinatal Health Strategic Plan 2022-2026, and our work with local partners,” Toomey said.

The Chatham County Public Health Department’s health director, Mike Zelek, couldn’t agree more. The CCPHD is leading the Equity for Moms and Babies Realized Across Chatham (EMBRACe) project, a multi-stakeholder initiative aimed at improving birth equity in Chatham.

“EMBRACe, which recently won the Community Partner of the Year Award from our Board of Health, highlights the importance of partnership, coordination, community and equity to address our greatest public health challenges, and this HRSA award can further support our collaborative approach,” Zelek said.

Marni Holder, MSN, RN, director of community health initiatives at UNC Family Medicine, who spearheaded the proposal submission with the University, PHS, and community leadership, is especially interested in opportunities like this one that can further ongoing innovative work between academic health centers, community safety-net providers, and the communities being served.

“I am very excited to see how this award to our local Federally Qualified Health Center organization, when combined with the input of UNC Family Medicine’s maternal health faculty and the voices of the pregnant community being served, can lead to positive developments in our regional perinatal care model, particularly for our rural communities,” Holder said.

Joan East, MD, director of the PHS Innovation Center, who will manage the research, hopes that this study can serve as a springboard for future efforts.

“With such a large and diverse perinatal population being served at PHS, it is my hope that this two-year project will allow us to create new infrastructure for future collaboration to address perinatal health inequities,” East said.

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