Breadcrumb
  1. Home
  2. Programs & Impact
  3. Focus Areas
  4. Maternal Health

Maternal Health

We support women’s health as they move through the stages of motherhood. This includes before, during, and after pregnancy—and beyond.

Challenges in maternal health

Pregnancy-related problems are serious issues in the United States. These problems affect different groups of people in different ways.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, in the United States:

  • Pregnancy-related mortality has not improved over the past decade.
  • There are racial and ethnic disparities. Non-Hispanic Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander, Black, and American Indian/Alaska Native women are at least two to four times as likely to die from pregnancy-related causes as non-Hispanic White women.
  • Four out of five pregnancy-related deaths are considered preventable.
  • More than 25,000 women experience unintended outcomes of labor and delivery that result in significant short- or long-term health consequences.

How we support these women

We focus on:

How we ensure women get the help they need

We fund national, state, and community organizations, and academic institutions. Some examples are:

Learn about our priorities

Improving access to services

We:

  • Gather data to track and improve health outcomes
  • Connect people to the right services at the right time
  • Offer programs that support healthy living for parents
  • Create national recommendations for preventive health care, like prenatal and postpartum care
  • Establish maternal health task forces to support the needs in their states

Promoting equity

We: 

  • Collect data on factors like race and income to measure disparities
  • Focus on locations where maternal mortality rates are higher than the national average
  • Provide services that understand and respect different cultures and languages
  • Ensure access to quality services

Strengthening the maternal and child health workforce

We train the health workforce to: 

  • Find and treat early warning signs of emergencies related to childbirth
  • Identify the early signs of physical and behavioral health problems, and promote healthy lifestyles
  • Screen for intimate partner violence

Gathering data and tracking progress

We gather program data through: 

Our investments in maternal health

Community-level

Regional and state levels

National

Research

Contact us

Email us at wellwomencare@hrsa.gov.

Date Last Reviewed: