WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Jacky Rosen (D-NV), a member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP), announced her co-sponsorship of the Maternal Care Access and Reducing Emergencies (Maternal CARE) Act, legislation that would create two new grant programs to improve maternal mortality, particularly through reducing racial disparities.
“The number of women in this country who experience life-threatening complications during pregnancy is deeply troubling,” said Senator Rosen. “The maternal mortality rates in the United States are startling and unacceptable. I’m supporting the Maternal CARE Act because all women deserve access to high quality medical care and more must be done to eliminate disparities and improve health outcomes across the board.”
BACKGROUND: This legislation creates a grant for medical training programs to provide implicit bias training to improve care to minority populations, and creates a Pregnancy Medical Home Demonstration Project to better coordinate care for pregnant women to improve outcomes. The bill also directs the National Academy of Medicine to do a study and make recommendations on how to best integrate bias recognition in medical school skills testing.
Last month, Senator Rosen co-sponsored the Healthy Maternal and Obstetric Medicine (MOM) Act, legislation that would ensure that women who are pregnant can sign up for health care coverage, outside of standard open enrollment periods.
According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), the United States is the only industrialized nation with a rising maternal mortality rate. Between 2000 and 2014, the United States maternal mortality rate increased by 26 percent. The U.S. has a higher maternal mortality rate than any other developed country. ACOG also found that black women are three to four times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related complication than non-Hispanic white women.
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