The Preeclampsia Foundation announced its support for the Black Maternal Health Caucus’s (BMHC) Momnibus, a set of nine individual bills critically important to solving our nation's maternal health crisis. Co-led by Congresswomen Lauren Underwood and Alma Adams, the new bills, introduced by different BMHC members, address the unique dimensions of the Black maternal health crisis in the United States. The bills aim to fill gaps in existing policies and programs to comprehensively address multiple dimensions of the Black maternal health crisis in America.

Momnibus is composed of nine individual bills which:

1. Make critical investments in social determinants of health that influence maternal health outcomes, like housing, transportation, and nutrition.
2. Provide funding to community-based organizations that are working to improve maternal health outcomes for Black women.
3. Comprehensively study the unique maternal health risks facing women veterans and invest in VA maternity care coordination.
4. Grow and diversify the perinatal workforce to ensure that every mom in America receives maternity care and support from people she can trust.
5. Improve data collection processes and quality measures to better understand the causes of the maternal health crisis in the United States and inform solutions to address it.
6. Invest in maternal mental health care and substance use disorder treatments.
7. Improve maternal health care and support for incarcerated women.
8. Invest in digital tools like telehealth to improve maternal health outcomes in underserved areas.
9. Promote innovative payment models to incentivize high-quality maternity care and continuity of health insurance coverage from pregnancy through labor and delivery and up to 1 year postpartum.

“The crisis, at the center of the U.S. maternal health crisis, is that black women are having worse outcomes and are more likely to die as a result of a maternal health complication”, says CEO Eleni Tsigas.  “These women are not statistics, they are our daughters, sisters, wives and friends.”

Tsigas said the Momnibus speaks to the priorities of the Preeclampsia Foundation to address significant racial and ethnic disparities in hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, including:

• Addressing disparities amongst black and other racial and ethnic populations to improve access to needed treatments and access to perinatal and postpartum care
• Use of remote monitoring technologies
• Realizing the need for maternal mental health for those with hypertensive disorders of pregnancy
• Support for implementing the Alliance for Innovation in Maternal Health (AIM) bundles, the evidence based best practices of care for hospitals and healthcare providers
• Engaging the patient during the course of her care
• Use of patient/family input into data collection (including Maternal Mortality Review Committees (MMRC)
• Seeking patient input in the development of quality metrics

“As a patient advocacy organization, we are particularly pleased that the patient voice is represented.  Capturing the lived experience of the patient and incorporating the patient/family voice in data collection and quality measure development is crucial to solving this crisis”, concluded Tsigas.

You can download a two-page briefing for sharing with your legislators.