Raising the Bar for Maternal Health Equity and Excellence offers a practical guide for healthcare provider institutions on advancing equity and excellence in maternal health.
This work was developed by the National Partnership for Women & Families, with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Working to solve a generations-long crisis fueled by multiple factors is daunting, but making a difference is possible. Healthcare organizations can deploy assets already at their disposal toward advancing maternal health equity—such as key infrastructure, a committee staff, and a treasure trove of data.
The guidance is organized into four core roles that healthcare provider institutions play, as:
- Providers: Provide whole-person care to achieve maternal health equity
- Employers: Employ and support a diverse maternal health workforce
- Community Partners: Engage with individuals and organizations in the community to achieve maternal health equity
- Advocates: Advocate for and invest in maternal health equity
“EXCELLENT AND EQUITABLE MATERNAL CARE OUTCOMES WILL REQUIRE THE INVOLVEMENT AND ACCOUNTABILITY OF PEOPLE ACROSS THE INSTITUTION.“
Actionable Strategies for Healthcare Systems
This actionable guide can be used by executive leadership, senior implementers, and others committed to maternal health equity.
The guide provides details about the importance of each role in advancing maternal health, suggestions for executive leadership and senior leadership team members on how to catalog and assess work, and a menu of action items decisionmakers can execute, based on assessment results and identified priorities.
What’s Included:
- Information about the maternal and infant health crisis
- Principles, partners, and processes for developing the guidance
- Actions that raise the bar
- Priority recommendations for C-suite executives and Boards of Directors
- Detailed checklists for department heads in areas such as maternal and women’s healthcare, quality improvement, community and patient engagement, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) work, human resources, and government affairs
A complimentary Implementation Toolbox includes checklists, inspirational stories of institutions that are raising the bar for maternal health equity, and a resource directory.
You’ll also discover operational guidance on:
- Demographic data collection and sharing
- Priority maternity care quality measures to improve outcomes and equity
- Maternal health measure set toolkit for health plan quality improvement
- Key design elements for maternity payment reform
- Linking payment to improving equity and outcomes
Visit the National Partnership for Women & Families’ Raising the Bar project page to learn more.
Actions That Raise the Bar for Maternal Health
As Providers
- Provide maternal-newborn care tailored to diverse socioeconomic and cultural life contexts and needs.
- Establish and sustain a trusting environment where all childbearing families are treated with dignity and respect and feel welcomed.
- Provide holistic, effective, high-quality care responsive to the needs and preferences of childbearing women and people, as well as plans co-created with individuals, families, and caregivers.
As Employers
- Invest in and support leaders who advance and embed equity, quality, and value across the organization to improve maternal health.
- Employ and cultivate a workforce that is representative of the surrounding community and is trained, equipped, and supported to advance maternal and infant health equity.
- Create and sustain workplaces and jobs where employees can be healthy, thrive, and help guide effective and equitable maternal care.
- Leverage procurement to ensure the diversity and wellbeing of contract workers who provide care and otherwise support the health of birthing people and are birthing people themselves.
As Community Partners
- Achieving optimal maternal health in the communities most affected by the maternal health crisis requires healthcare institutions to partner with the communities they serve.
- Build trusting relationships with the community to improve maternal health.
- Respect and build on the expertise and power of individuals and organizations in the community to advance optimal maternal health.
As Advocates
- Advocate for maternity care delivery and payment reforms that align resources and incentives with achieving maternal health equity, and incorporate effective models into your system.
- Incorporate into your advocacy strategies advancing public policies that address the social drivers that undermine maternal health.
- Use investment and procurement power: Audit and adjust your business model, investment and purchasing strategies, and philanthropy to improve communities’ maternal health and overall resilience.