The Institute for Medicaid Innovation has chosen five states to participate in a national midwifery learning collaborative, which IMI says offers a rare opportunity for stakeholders across multiple levels of maternal health to join in discussion to identify ways to reduce maternal health disparities.
A report released Sept. 15 by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights noted that Black women in the U.S. are three to four times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than White women in the U.S., and Native American women are more than two times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than White women in the U.S. These disparities have become more severe over the last 30 years, the report noted.
With funding from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, IMI will gather decision-makers from Arizona, California, Kentucky, Michigan and Washington state. These five state teams will participate in a three-year learning collaborative that includes guidance and support on determining long-term solutions to integrating, implementing, and funding midwifery-led care in their state.
Each state-based team includes representation from state Medicaid agencies, Medicaid health plans, midwifery practices, and community organizations. At the end of the collaborative, the teams will have identified shared goals to advance midwifery-led models of care, strategies to achieve those goals, piloted and evaluated their efforts, and charted a course to continue to advance these models in their state.
The new collaborative builds on the work of IMI’s previous maternal health initiatives: “Improving Maternal Health Access, Coverage, and Outcomes in Medicaid,” a report outlining the evidence-based research supporting maternal health initiatives, such as midwifery-led care; and the organization’s eight-part learning series overviewing the policy and care opportunities in midwifery-led models of care.
