U.S. Sens. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) and Todd Young (R-IN) joined a dozen members of Congress in requesting that the nation’s health leaders prioritize approaches to reduce maternal mortality rates in America.
In an Oct. 9 letter sent to U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Seema Verma, the bipartisan group of 14 senators requested that HHS and CMS also include strategies for pregnant women and mothers enrolled in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).
“From 2000 to 2014, the rate of maternal mortality, defined as the death of a woman while pregnant or during the one-year period following the date of the end of pregnancy, increased by 26 percent in the United States,” according to the senators’ letter. “This troubling trend makes the United States an outlier among every other developed country.”
In fact, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the United States ranks 30 of 31 in maternal mortality among developed nations, according to a statement released by Sen. Young’s office, which noted the congressman’s home state of Indiana is ranked third nationwide for having the highest maternal death rate.
Among the lawmakers who joined Sens. Young and Capito in signing the letter were U.S. Sens. Ben Cardin (D-MD), Dean Heller (R-NV), and lead Democrat Tom Carper (D-DE).
The lawmakers said they’re especially concerned about the racial and ethnic disparities in maternal and infant health across the country.
“African-American women are three to four times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes as compared to other women in the United States,” they wrote, noting that black infants die at a rate twice as high as other infants.
American Indian and Alaskan Native women also don’t fare as well as white women with roughly twice as many pregnancy-related deaths per 100,000 live births, according to their letter.
“Research indicates that numerous factors may contribute to these glaring health disparities, including barriers to accessing necessary pre- and post-natal care, a growing prevalence of chronic conditions, maternal stress, inadequate training for health care providers, racial bias, and social determinants of health,” wrote the senators.
Moreover, disparate maternal mortality rates could be higher in some hospitals compared to others, the senators wrote, citing data from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. This may indicate that some hospitals have developed strategies to better prepare for pregnancy-related complications and they might be useful to adopt nationwide, the members wrote.
The senators asked Azar and Verma to review existing data and give them recommendations about “what can be done at the federal, state, and local levels to reduce mortality and improve health outcomes for all mothers and their children, regardless of their racial and ethnic background, income level, or educational attainment.”
The lawmakers requested Azar and Verma respond to several questions by Nov. 1. The senators are interested to learn the specific data for the rate of maternal and infant mortality for individuals covered by Medicaid and CHIP, as well as the number of states that consistently reported this data in 2018.
Additionally, they asked for the number of states that have implemented a value-based payment approach and/or new maternal care delivery models to improve maternal and infant health outcomes, as well as what other initiatives HHS and CMS have undertaken to reduce mortality rates, among other questions.