Maternal Health Awareness Day: what you need to know
Maternal Health Awareness Day began in 2016 by the New Jersey section of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) with the addition of several other medical affiliates (New Jersey Obstetric & Gynecological Society; the Association of Women’s Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses; and the New Jersey Affiliate of the American College of Nurse-Midwives). Following a large enthusiasm and support effort across all their districts, ACOG has been celebrating and promoting Maternal Health Awareness Day on a national level since 2021.
Recent actions from this important day have led ACOG to partner with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and join other specialty organizations with the goal of helping eliminate preventable maternal mortality in a multi-disciplinary fashion. For Maternal Health Awareness Day 2025, ACOG has selected the theme “Know What’s at Stake.”
Unfortunately, the United States continues to demonstrate the highest rates of maternal mortality among developed countries. Each year, approximately 800 women die of maternal causes in the United States. The maternal mortality rate from the 2022 National Vital Statistics System report that the United States experiences 22.3 deaths per 100,000 live births. This number increases to 49.5 deaths per 100,000 lives births when examining Black non-Hispanic patients. Nearly 80% of these deaths are considered preventable, with half of these deaths occurring between a week to one year postpartum. These figures are completely unacceptable and tragic to patients, their families and their communities. In addition, following the Dobbs decision in 2022, many states lost or reduced access to reproductive care, which in turn have increased the number of care deserts affecting numerous communities.
Pregnancies in the United States demonstrate a significant and steady rise in high-risk maternal conditions and comorbidities. A recent population-based retrospective study examining trends in United States pregnancies from 2010 to 2021 found a significant increase in hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (113% relative increase), IVF pregnancies (200% relative increase), advanced maternal age (36.7% relative increase), obesity (35.6% relative increase), and pre-gestational diabetes (57.1% relative increase). However, as the incidence of high-risk pregnancies increase in the United States, there also is a significant gap in the number of medical research breakthroughs and funding related to women’s health.
A recent report from the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) found that women’s health research is amongst the lowest-funded fields by the National Institute of Health (NIH), accounting for just 8.8% of the NIH budget from 2013 to 2023. This share in funding has actually decreased steadily over time, with some being concerned about further cutting of funds with the recent change in congressional legislation. It was only in 2017 when the federal government removed pregnant patients from the list of vulnerable populations in federal regulations governing human subjects research. However, the Society of Maternal Fetal Medicine (SMFM) Health Policy and Advocacy Committee still must continue to call for the inclusion of pregnant and lactating persons into clinical trials and important pharmaceutical research. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not changed its listing of pregnant people as a vulnerable population. A recent analysis of FDA drug labels has found the vast majority of pharmaceutical research on pregnant and lactating people is limited to animal-only data. In total, patients and providers are left with a large gap in clinical knowledge and must extrapolate findings from sex-discordant, non-pregnant and oftentimes animal-only data.
Maternal Health Awareness Day is an important movement by ACOG that involves all of our medical specialties, patient communities and governments, both local and federal. We are at a critical time in our country where there is a well-documented maternal mortality crisis with continued loss of reproductive freedom. We must call on one another to step up to the task of improving all aspects of maternal healthcare. We must understand that each of us plays a critical role in addressing the needs of our pregnant population. We must know what is at stake for maternal healthcare in the United States.
By Dr. Alexander Saucedo, assistant professor in the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology at Baylor College of Medicine
