Maternal Mortality

A federally funded moonshot initiative with resources, commitment, and equity focus is needed to transform maternal health research, health services, and policies to reduce mortality. The National Institutes of Health's (NIH) Pathways to Prevention panel on postpartum health provides a consensus statement on the evidence, research gaps, and future priorities to prevent maternal morbidity and mortality. The panel reviewed an NIH-commissioned evidence review and workshop that included epidemiologic studies, demonstration interventions, and other maternal morbidity and mortality research to create these national recommendations. The panel concludes that a maternal morbidity and mortality crisis reflects a systemic failure of current U.S. health care, research efforts, and social policies. The panel recommends improving maternal health through a "maternal morbidity and mortality prevention moonshot" that adopts a comprehensive, multilevel life course conceptual framework; strengthens the research methods used within the science of maternal health; establishes and conducts national prevention, treatment, and policy interventions; and reimburses evidence-informed clinical approaches to improve maternal health across the life course. Without a national focus on fundamentally transformative interventions and other initiatives aimed at redressing structural racism and inequities in health care, current interventions and clinical advances in maternal morbidity and mortality prevention will remain tragically insufficient.