House Energy and Commerce Republican Leader Greg Walden (R-OR) and Health Subcommittee Republican Leader Michael C. Burgess (R-TX) joined a bipartisan group of committee leaders in requesting information on the efforts taken by federal agencies to combat the high U.S. rate of maternal mortality.
In letters sent to six federal agencies on April 24 and led by House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ), the members of Congress made clear that pregnancy-related deaths is a major public health concern.
The number of reported pregnancy-related deaths in the United States has more than doubled from seven deaths per 100,000 live births in 1987 to 18 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2014, the letter said.
“Over the last two decades, the number of women who die each year during pregnancy or within a year of delivery in the United States has increased dramatically,” the committee leaders wrote in the letters.
Further, the World Health Organization found in a 2015 report that the United States was one of about a dozen countries worldwide that had experienced an increase in its maternal mortality rate since 1990, according to the letters.
“While maternal mortality rates have been increasing in the United States in recent years, since 1950, black mothers have continued to die at three to four times the rate of white mothers, representing one of the widest racial disparities in women’s health,” the lawmakers added.
Last year the Preventing Maternal Deaths Act was passed by Congress in order to improve data collection and reporting of maternal mortality. In March, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced funding made possible by that law for surveillance systems to better understand maternal complications related to pregnancy.
The letter from Reps. Walden, Burgess and the other leaders noted that funding was a key first step, but that further improvements in reporting and data collection should be explored in order to reduce maternal mortality.
The committee leaders requested briefings from the CDC, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), Indian Health Service (IHS), and Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health (OASH).