Rural Maternal & Infant Health

Many rural communities face unique challenges in accessing quality health care services and resources especially around maternal and infant health care. Limited or absent obstetric care services due to workforce shortages, financial barriers, lack of transportation, and geographic isolation can lead to an increase in morbidity rates of moms and babies.

Medicaid plays a vital role in maternal and infant health care and covers nearly half of all births in rural communities. Yet, in 2018, over half of rural counties did not have a hospital that offered obstetric services. That coupled with recent cuts to Medicaid will leave impact many rural families who may be burdened with additional concerns like intimate partner violence (IPV), which directly impacts effects maternal and infant health and safety.

Why Our Work Is Important

Maternal and infant health outcomes improve when:

• Affordable health insurance, especially Medicaid are prioritized;
• Families have economic security;
• Mothers have support and access to care from a trusted provider, including a community health worker, home visitors, peer support specialist or a doula that can connect pregnant and postpartum families to services, address social needs, and increase access to primary and preventive care;
• Families can connect with advocates who can provide critical resources to prevent IPV and address the safety needs of families.

Together, these health and community-based programs offer a lifeline for moms and babies to feel supported, healthy, and safe.

Our Approach

FUTURES is building the Rural Maternal & Infant Health Initiative across our teams and projects to support families in pregnancy, postpartum, and early parenthood by strengthening community-based health care and prevention systems—supporting programs and policies that will improve access and bring compassionate, coordinated care closer to families.

The initiative will support:

• Community-Based Advocates for Families that will provide learning opportunities throughout the year to support doulas, community health workers, home visitors, and advocates to build their capacity to address violence, abuse, and trauma, and connect families to support.
• Convene National Learning Opportunities through virtual events that share research, evidence-based models, and policy strategies that support maternal and infant health.
• Improve Coordination Across Systems, especially between health care providers and maternal health advocates.

Policy Priorities

To advance equitable maternal and infant health outcomes in rural communities, the initiative prioritizes policies that:

1.  Protect Medicaid and private health insurance coverage for pregnant and postpartum families.
2.  Expand and support sustainable reimbursement for doulas, home visitors, community health workers, peer support specialists, and advocates.
3.  Protect and expand community health center funding, which serves 52 million Americans annually – approximately 1 in 3 in rural communities.
4.  Support funding for technological tools such as telehealth, broadband access, and mobile health services to  expand rural healthcare access and services.
5.  Support and expand maternal and child health funding, paid family leave and childcare to improve perinatal outcomes for families, reduce maternal mortality and morbidity rates, and support early parenthood.

Take Action

Sign up for our rural maternal health email list and join us as we work with national and state advocacy partners to advance policies and legislation that will increase safety, care, support, and resources for moms and babies.

For more information, contact: health@futureswithoutviolence.org