Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Maternal Health Under Siege As Study Shows Mortality Rate Up 27% in US
Stat: U.S. Maternal Mortality Rate Increased By 27% Over Five Years, NIH Study Finds
A new U.S. government paper documenting an increase in maternal mortality from 2018 to 2022 does not hedge in its conclusion, calling the issue “an urgent public health priority.” That it was published amid massive job and funding cuts at federal health agencies charged with reducing these deaths has not escaped notice. (Oza, 4/9)
The New York Times: One-Third Of Maternal Deaths Occur Long After Delivery, Study Finds
During a recent five-year period, a substantial portion of maternal deaths in America — almost one-third — took place more than six weeks after childbirth, at a time when most new mothers think they are in the clear, researchers reported on Wednesday. The study, published in JAMA Network Open, is one of the first to track maternal health complications during pregnancy and in the year after delivery. (Caryn Rabin, 4/9)
MedPage Today: Team Behind Critical CDC Maternal And Infant Health Dataset Axed
As part of the cuts to federal health agencies by the Trump administration, the entire team behind a key CDC dataset for ob/gyn research has been axed. On April 1, all 17 members of the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS) team received a reduction-in-force notice, as did almost the entire Division of Reproductive Health at CDC. They lost access to their laptops shortly after. Technically, everyone is on administrative leave until June 2, when they have to depart from the CDC. (Robertson, 4/9)
In abortion updates —
Missouri Independent: Missouri House GOP Starts Over With New Bill To Ban Abortion With Limited Exceptions
With less than six weeks left in the legislative session, Missouri House Republicans scrapped their latest of several iterations of an abortion ban in search of a new solution. The newest proposed constitutional amendment got its first committee hearing Wednesday night with a bill filed by Republican state Rep. Ed Lewis of Moberly presented to the House Children and Families Committee by its new handler, state Rep. Brian Seitz, a Branson Republican. ... The ballot language for the latest legislation was also not yet public Wednesday evening, but the bill it was based on was criticized for excluding any direct reference to an abortion ban. Instead it sought to ask if voters wanted to “guarantee access to care for medical emergencies, ectopic pregnancies and miscarriages,” a right that is already guaranteed in the Missouri Constitution. (Spoerre, 4/10)
The 19th: She Was Tracking Post-Roe Abortions. The Government Just Pulled Her Funding.
Diana Greene Foster is responsible for landmark research on the effects of abortion access — a massive 10-year study that tracked thousands of people who had an abortion or were denied one. But funding for a follow-up to her seminal Turnaway Study has just been cut as part of a wave of canceled health policy research. Foster received a MacArthur “genius grant” for the Turnaway Study. That piece of research, which examined the impact of restrictions even before the fall of Roe v. Wade, helped shape public understanding of how abortion access can affect people’s health and economic well-being by finding that people who were denied abortions were more likely to experience years of poverty compared to those who could terminate their unplanned pregnancies. (Luthra, 4/9)
KGOU: How One Group Is Educating Oklahomans On Reproductive Health Care Amid State Abortion Ban
Repro46's target audience is people across the political spectrum who are in the middle when it comes to abortion. Its strategy is three-pronged: comprehensive communication across different forms of media, larger educational events and more intimate five-to-ten-person conversations called “Open House, Open Minds.” (Taylor, 4/10)
