Thread by @ASlavitt

The US is one of the few countries on the planet that is going backwards on maternal and infant health. Especially for black and brown moms.

I just kicked off a 2 day session with health care leaders from across the country to start to turn this around.

What’s going on?

64% of low income moms aren’t getting adequate prenatal care (vs 85%)
4 in 10 get no post partem care

When life doesn’t start out well, when kids are born prematurely, lots of things go wrong. 1 in 3 need special services & educational/social outcomes are bad.

There are massive “maternity desserts” in big cities, in rural communities, in tribal communities. So more babies are born early.

At 35 weeks, the brain is only 2/3 the weight it is at 39 weeks.

Trump is making access to Medicaid, WIC, and basic services harder. Very harmful.

The key to a healthy baby is a healthy mom.

How do you have a healthy infant, or even a healthy first year or two of life without giving great care to the mom— physically, mentally, socially, developmentally?

There are good ideas and solutions— midwives, doulas, payment proposals that care for mom and baby.

But we need a massive call to action. We bemoan too much end of life care. But we need to scream loudly about underinvestment in beginning of life Care.

This is what the Medicaid Transformation Project we launched last year. 30 major delivery systems are prioritizing finding the best practices and new ideas to turn this around.

I commend them and thanks the team at @HealthAVIA who work incredibly hard to make this happen.

Thanks to Commissioner Carole Johnson of NJ for leading a bold agenda to transform care for mom’s & babies.

And to Carole and other policy makers for being here to commit to working to make things better.