What’s Next for the LAN?
Birth Equity
Belief
One goal is to align the work of community-based organizations already steeped in birth equity, while adding a clinical component that fosters community
collaboration.
Listening to the voices of Black women, respecting the knowledge of their own bodies — and lived experience — is one component. The ultimate goal is to build trust and communication between patients and providers.
Blood Pressure
Blood pressure will be used as a key metric, and an area of intervention, due to the prevalence of hypertension among Black women and birthing people.
The LAN will advocate for regular hypertension screenings, as well as provide specific training around this measure for both patients and providers.
Additionally, community collaboration includes partnerships with pharmacies and health clinics to increase access to blood pressure monitoring devices and resources to empower self-management and self-advocacy.
Doulas
According to the March of Dimes, when pregnant women and birthing people are paired with a doula, they are two times less likely to experience birth complications; four times less likely to deliver a baby with low birthweight; have fewer C-sections; and experience anxiety and depression at lower rates, among many other benefits. Doulas provide informational, emotional, and physiological support, and patient advocacy during the perinatal and postpartum periods — helping to mitigate health and racial inequities at doctor visits and during labor, delivery, and after birth.
Doulas connect culturally with the birthing people they support, respecting and protecting their values, beliefs, and preferences.
The LAN will partner with doulas and organizations that train and facilitate trust-based, team-based integration with clinical providers. The goal is to address race-based disparities and improve maternal and infant health outcomes.
Data
Using race, ethnicity, and language (REL) data, the LAN will build a robust data collection and analysis system of factors that contribute to maternal health disparities to effectively allocate resources to address the root causes of these disparities.
REL data is demographic information used to understand unique health care risks and health care needs. It is used to improve quality in health care settings. Race and ethnicity are reflections of identity and social experiences, not biological facts.
The LAN will work with health systems to glean transparent reporting of maternal health outcomes as a measure of transparency and accountability for improving maternal and infant health outcomes for Black women and birthing people. The LAN will also engage Black women and community stakeholders in the design, implementation, and interpretation of maternal health data to ensure interventions are culturally relevant, responsive to community needs, and aligned with the priorities of those most affected by maternal health disparities.
By focusing on Black pregnant women and birthing people, who experience the worst maternal health outcomes in the U.S., pervasive, systemic barriers to quality care will be highlighted and underscored. Identifying and addressing these barriers, through an anti-racist lens—and with the aim to infuse quality-driven approaches that improve maternal health outcomes for those who fare the worst—will inherently lead to quality improvements in maternal health outcomes for all pregnant women and birthing people.
Birthing People With Chronic Conditions Are More Likely to Deliver Preterm
15.5%
Smoking
(8.5% fo all births)
28.0%
Hypertension
(4.7% fo all births)
12.9%
Unhealthy weight
(37.0% fo all births)
34.5%
Diabetes
(1.3% fo all births)
Note: More than one condition can occur at the same time. All conditions occur prior to pregnancy.
Source: National Center for Health Statistics, Natality data, 2021-2023.
“You can’t have quality without equity, and you can’t have equity without quality.”