These healthcare goals are achievable through advocacy and your generous support:

Maternal Safety

• Increase public awareness of the need for maternal equity and the state’s maternity care deserts

• Increase screenings/referrals for perinatal depression and domestic violence, starting at the initial prenatal screening, throughout the pregnancy, in the postpartum period, and during well-baby visits

• Promote self-advocacy and peer-to-peer, group-centered support for at-risk mothers

• Encourage maternal care professionals, organizations, and health facilities to update standards of practice and care to include all recommended guidelines for preventing medical complications by instituting regular mandatory training and practice 

• Educate providers on the availability of maternal postpartum resources, such as home-visiting programs

• Follow the recommended California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative (CMQCC) guidelines (www.cmqcc.org) for transfer and transport to a higher-level care facility for any complications using regional transport services

• Increase public health surveillance, prevention research, and maternal health programs overall

Access to Care

• Ensure all pregnant persons have access to quality pre-and postnatal care, especially those living in rural areas, the uninsured, and the underinsured

• Push for funding and policy for state doula reimbursement (our state Medicaid should reimburse for non-clinical services such as doula care)

• Increase and streamline access to behavioral health services statewide, including training and education for advanced practice nurses in behavioral health services

• Continue grassroots advocacy for equitable and accessible maternal healthcare 

Reduce Disparities

• Expand Medicaid to reduce health disparities and improve access to preventative care, allowing birthing mothers to receive critical healthcare resources

• Texas should require employers to provide paid family leave for parents who are out on parental leave

• Provide clinician training in contributing factors in the variation of maternal mortality and morbidity ratio

• Facilities should increase funding to provide bias training, such as through the March of Dimes and other facilitating organizations

• Develop statewide cultural curriculum benchmarks in Texas medical schools

• Increase provider accountability and cultural sensitivity in practice, promoting effective and culturally responsive patient-centered care

• Develop effective and sustainable partnerships with community and healthcare stakeholders to collectively reduce disparities

Data Reporting

• Standardize measures for computing the state’s Maternal Mortality Ratio

• Improve data collection and surveillance of maternal deaths, promoting best practices for data reporting

• Lobby for bipartisan support for legislative initiatives and data review requests, particularly regarding the data collection and analysis needed by the Texas Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee