Maternal and Child Health 2022 Reflection
2022 has been a busy year for the Maternal and Child Health (MCH) team at IWES! You may remember from our update last year that we worked diligently with our partners on the MAMA+ Health Policy Agenda to help educate lawmakers on various MCH issues and how to use policy to improve maternal and child health outcomes. As part of that work, we saw the passage of House Concurrent Resolution 105 (HCR 105), authored by State Representative Royce Duplessis, which established the Louisiana Perinatal Mental Health Taskforce. Towards the end of 2021, we led the Taskforce, composed of various maternal health experts and individuals with lived experience, to discuss the steps to improve perinatal mental health in Louisiana. At the beginning of this year, we combined what we learned and our recommendations to improve perinatal mental health in the Louisiana Perinatal Mental Health Taskforce Report.
Collectively, we came up with four recommendations to address and improve perinatal mental health in Louisiana:
Incorporate universal perinatal mental and anxiety disorder screening into critical care systems for pregnant and postpartum persons
Expand direct access to mental health services for birthing people in need of perinatal mental health services by integrating primary care and mental health
Optimize and expand the care coordination system for birthing people in need of perinatal mental health services
Ensure that the Louisiana Department of Health supports Louisiana's mental health and substance use provider network in meeting and addressing in a timely manner the mental health needs of pregnant and postpartum persons, particularly persons who are most impacted by structural and social barriers to health
As a result of the report and its findings, House Bill 784, now known as Act 188, the Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorders (PMADs) Act, was passed! This act is the first step in improving perinatal mental health outcomes in the state by providing mood disorder screenings, treatments, and collaborative care. If you would like to read in detail our learnings and recommendations, you can read the Perinatal Mental Health Taskforce Report here. This past year, we also contributed our findings to the 2022 Status of Women in Louisiana Report, which will be published in early 2023.
While we spend a lot of time advocating for birthing people, we also make sure to step back and allow them to share their own stories. To celebrate Black Maternal Health Week this year, we shared our findings from the Perinatal Taskforce report as a part of our #ThisIsWhy campaign and went to the capital to advocate with our partners for better maternal and child health outcomes. Currently, we are working diligently to summarize what we learned from our study My Body. My Voice. My Birth. My Support, where we spoke with birthing people in the past two years with varying birthing and breastfeeding experiences to better understand what it’s like to give birth in Louisiana. We learned a great deal from our participants and are excited to share our findings soon!
Finally, in August, our Chief Impact Officer, Lisa Richardson, Ph.D., traveled to Chicago, IL, to present at the National Maternal Health Innovation Symposium. This year the symposium focused on advancing equity through engagement, innovation, and policy. While there, she shared about our work with the Alliance for Innovation on Maternal Health- Community Care Initiative (AIM CCI).