Senator Ossoff co-sponsors legislation addressing maternal health for Black women

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By Itoro Umontuen | on September 27, 2021

By Itoro N. Umontuen | The Atlanta Voice

U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff speaks during a property league astatine Clark Atlanta University connected Friday, May 7, 2021. (Photo: Itoro N. Umontuen/The Atlanta Voice

Monday afternoon, U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff began a propulsion to amended maternal wellness and curb maternal mortality rates successful Georgia and nationwide, It’s a situation that disproportionately impacts Black women.

Black women successful Georgia are 3 times much apt to dice from pregnancy-related complications than achromatic women nationally, according to information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Senator Ossoff is calling connected Congress to walk respective pieces of authorities to amended maternal wellness outcomes and trim the maternal mortality complaint successful Georgia and crossed the country.

“The shockingly precocious maternal mortality complaint for Black women successful Georgia is simply a travesty. It is unacceptable for immoderate parent to endure oregon dice due to the fact that she lacks due care, and that’s wherefore I’m urging my colleagues to walk this authorities I’ve cosponsored that addresses maternal mortality for Black women successful Georgia,” Senator Ossoff said successful a statement.

Additionally, Georgia’s maternal decease complaint reached 66.3 deaths per 100,000 unrecorded births from 2013 to 2017, arsenic opposed to the nationalist maternal decease complaint of 29.6, according to CDC information published done America’s Health Rankings.

According to the CDC, astir 2 thirds of maternal deaths hap during oregon aft pregnancy, expanding the request for stronger preventative and post-partum care.

Here are the bills Senator Ossoff are co-sponsoring:

Social Determinants for Moms Act

  • Establishes a task unit crossed agencies and departments to coordinate national efforts to code societal determinants of wellness for large and postpartum people.
  • Provides backing for safe, stable, adequate, prime lodging for large and postpartum people.
  • Studies the proscription barriers that forestall large and postpartum radical from attending maternity attraction appointments and accessing important societal services.
  • Extends WIC eligibility periods for caller moms.
  • Provides backing to found and standard programs that present nutritious food, babe formula, cleanable water, and diapers to large and postpartum radical successful nutrient deserts.
  • Studies the effects of biology risks to maternal and babe wellness outcomes and makes recommendations for steps to extremity radical and taste disparities.
  • Provides backing for free, drop-in kid attraction access.
  • Provides grants to community-based organizations and nationalist wellness departments to code unsocial societal determinants of wellness needs successful their communities.

Moms Matter Act

  • Invests successful community-based programs that supply intelligence and behavioral wellness treatments and enactment to moms with maternal wellness conditions oregon substance usage disorder.
  • Provides backing for programs to turn and diversify the maternal intelligence and behavioral wellness attraction workforce to grow entree to culturally congruent attraction and enactment for large and postpartum radical with maternal intelligence wellness conditions and substance usage disorders.

Data to Save Moms Act

  • Promotes greater diverseness and assemblage engagement successful authorities and Tribal Maternal Mortality Review Committees.
  • Conducts a broad reappraisal of maternal wellness information postulation processes and prime measures done engagement with cardinal stakeholders to see issues.
  • Commissions a broad survey connected maternal mortality and terrible maternal morbidity among Native American large and postpartum people.
  • Invests successful maternal wellness probe astatine Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs), similar HBCUs.

Perinatal Workforce Act

  • Requires the Secretary of Health and Human Services to supply guidance to states connected the promotion of racially, ethnically, and professionally divers maternity attraction teams and to survey however culturally congruent maternity attraction promotes amended outcomes for moms, particularly successful communities of color.
  • Provides backing to found and standard programs that volition turn and diversify the maternal wellness workforce.
  • Studies the barriers that forestall women – peculiarly from underserved communities – from entering maternity attraction professions and receiving equitable compensation.

Tech to Save Moms Act

  • Requires the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Innovation Center to see models that amended the integration of telehealth services successful maternal wellness care.
  • Provides backing for technology-enabled collaborative learning and capableness gathering models that volition make and disseminate instructional programming and grooming for maternity attraction providers successful underserved areas.
  • Establishes a assistance programme to beforehand integer tools designed to code radical and taste disparities successful maternal wellness outcomes.
  • Studies the usage of caller technologies, similar artificial intelligence, successful maternal wellness attraction to forestall radical and taste biases from being built into maternity attraction innovations.

 Protecting Moms Who Served Act

  • Codifies maternity attraction coordination programs astatine VA facilities.
  • Commissions a broad survey connected maternal mortality and terrible maternal morbidity among veterans.

According to the Georgia Department of Health, each Georgia physicians, laboratories, and different wellness attraction providers are required by instrumentality to study the decease of a pistillate during oregon wrong 1 twelvemonth of the extremity of pregnancy, irrespective of cause, wrong 7 days.

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