Tuskegee University Research Center for Maternal, Child, and Family Equity

Since the development of a national surveillance system that has included stratification by race/ enthicity black women have been twice as likely to die during child birth. The absence of accessible and acceptable health strategies that can be consistently and persistently utilize by rural women during their life span has a dramatic impact on their mental and physical health. By implementing the following goals utilizing community based participatory strategies this program will provide a framework for addressing maternal child and family health in rural America. GOAL #1: The Tuskegee University has launched a Maternal Health Equity Research Center which conducts impactful maternal health equity research in collaboration with the Macon Bullock and Barbour partner communities. GOAL #2: To fully understand and address the root causes of disparities in maternal mortality severe maternal morbidity and maternal health outcomes. Goal #3: To develop community-based solutions to address these disparities and advance health equity in collaboration with the targeted community. GOAL #4: To sustain the research infrastructure and expand the breadth of maternal health disparity topics conducted by the faculty and research staff of the XYZ University Maternal Health Disparities Research Center. Methods: Utilizing community-based participatory research strategies the center will utilize mixed methods incorporating quantitative and qualitative mthodologies over the life of the cooperative agreement. Qualtrics will be used to develop surveys collect and analyze quantitative data. As the year one planning year concludes the methodologies will be refined and tailored to meet the needs of each pilot study project implemented. Outcomes

Products:

1) Develop the Center of Excellence for Rural Maternal Child & Family Health Equity that provides an evidenced based framework for assessing and eliminating barriers to maternal health equity in rural America. 2) Train early investigators community health works doulas and midwives to identify and intervene to decrease risk factors for adverse health comes for rural mothers and babies.