The Department’s Action Plan lays out a vision for improving maternal health that applies a “life course” approach organized around four goals and it sets three ambitious targets to achieve this vision. Each of the four goals includes multiple objectives and action items to drive progress. The Action Plan also describes the current state of maternal health outcomes in the U.S., challenges in reducing maternal mortality and morbidity, recent efforts to improve maternal health within and beyond the federal government, and it discusses various forums in which HHS leadership sought input from key stakeholders.
The Action Plan is being released concurrently with the Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Improve Maternal Health. While the Action Plan summarizes the Department’s work to ensure the U.S. is one of the safest countries in the world to give birth, the Surgeon General’s Call to Action outlines strategies and actions for a diverse set of external stakeholders to improve maternal health. These documents complement and reinforce each other, highlighting the important role all Americans can take to drive progress towards improving maternal health in the U.S.
Maternal Health Action Plan
As part of the Administration’s broader efforts to improve health in America, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is announcing its vision for ensuring the U.S. is one of the safest countries in the world for women to give birth.
Documents include:
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Documents From Other Offices:
The links below provide information on other important actions being launched as part of the HHS Maternal Health Initiative.
- Surgeon General's Call to Action
- The HHS Hypertension Innovator Award Competition is a $3.3 million competition to identify effective, pre-existing programs that care for women with hypertension who are pregnant and/or postpartum with the goal of replicating and/or expanding effective programs with a focus on reducing disparities in hypertension control;
- The Public-Private Partnership to Improve Maternal Outcomes for Black Mothers is a pilot program that will launch in at least 100 hospitals across the U.S. to support the implementation of evidence-based best practices that improve healthcare quality, reduce disparities in maternal health outcomes, and change the culture of maternity care with the goal of expanding and scaling those initiatives that demonstrate success; and
- The Initiative to Improve Maternal Health Data and Drive Quality Improvement will create a network of at least 200 hospitals and analyze timely data on their maternal mortality, morbidity, and maternal health practices to drive quality improvement and inform program planning and policy development for HHS.
- State Data for Conducting Patient Centered Outcomes Research to Improve Maternal Health: Stakeholder Discussions Summary Report
This report presents a summary of discussions with stakeholders conducted to identify key components of successful state-based maternal health data linkage initiatives, to recognize the gaps in implementing such initiatives including data use for research and finally to understand the current status of existing linkages of state-level data with other data sources and with electronic health records.