State Strategies for Preventing Pregnancy-Related Deaths: A Guide for Moving Maternal Mortality Review Committee Data to Action
About State Strategies for Preventing Pregnancy-Related Deaths
Maternal mortality review committees (MMRCs) across the nation are using shared processes and terminology to understand how to prevent maternal mortality. Building upon this momentum, the time is now, to not only continue improving the quality of data collected and reviewed, but to move that data to action. State Strategies for Preventing Pregnancy-Related Deaths: A Guide for Moving Maternal Mortality Review Committee Data to Action provides MMRCs and their partners with a guide to help facilitate implementation of data-informed strategies to prevent pregnancy-related deaths.
How to use State Strategies for Preventing Pregnancy-Related Deaths
This guide is best used when a MMRC has reached the point of identifying priority recommendations informed by the review of pregnancy-associated deaths and is now ready to translate that knowledge into a focused effort to move MMRC information from data to action. For example, review committees may select recommendations for prioritization related to the leading causes of deaths, deaths with a high degree of preventability, or those that address disproportionately affected populations. Engagement of MMRC information by public health, clinical and community partners as outlined in this guide further refines the prioritization process for selecting strategies to move recommendations to action.
What Is in State Strategies for Preventing Pregnancy-Related Deaths?
State Strategies for Preventing Pregnancy-Related Deaths: A Guide for Moving Maternal Mortality Review Committee Data to Action presents translating data into action as an iterative four-step process, with each step approached through an equity lens and supported by continuous monitoring and review.
Use data to understand the scope of the problem to identify and review complementary data to MMRC data from other population-based sources that may provide further information for identifying potential actions and associated strategies.
Understand the context of the solution to determine what is already being done to address the recommendation, the organizational and community factors, partnerships with key decisionmakers, and available resources (i.e., human and financial).
Identify potential goals and strategies based on best practices and successful examples. These goals, while not exhaustive, are illustrative and may include
- Eliminate racial and ethnic disparities in maternal mortality.
- Invest in and partner with communities.
- Ensure access to care for all pregnant and postpartum persons.
- Ensure quality care for all pregnant and postpartum persons.
- Strengthen maternal mortality data.
Act on your strategies, discusses important considerations for implementation, including assessing potential strategies for fit, developing an implementation plan and timeline, and planning to evaluate strategies.
Each step of moving a MMRC’s prioritized recommendations to action should integrate equity. An equity lens includes taking deliberate steps to be sure every mother’s life is valued equally, understanding the impacts of historical trauma and the role of inequitable institutional structures, as well as understanding patient and community perspectives. Considering how approach, design, and implementation of strategies may impact disproportionately affected populations and the prioritization of leading causes of pregnancy-related deaths among these populations can help promote progress toward equity and the elimination of disparities in maternal mortality.
Throughout the process, it is important to systematically examine progress to identify facilitators and barriers to success. Information gathered for each step informs continuous monitoring and review. Assessing whether the strategies selected for action are having the intended effect (evaluation) contributes to the evidence-base for maternal health programs and identifies additional actions that may be necessary to achieve success. Continuous monitoring and review of strategy implementation, together with evaluation of outcomes, are important for tracking progress to ensure implementation is equitable.