Structural inequities revealed
By Sarah Jane Tribble | Kaiser Health News
As maternal mortality skyrockets in the United States, a federal program created to improve rural maternity care has bypassed Black mothers, who are at the highest risk of complications and death related to pregnancy.
The grant-funded initiative, administered by the Health Resources and Services Administration, began rolling out four years ago and, so far, has budgeted nearly $32 million to provide access and care for thousands of mothers and babies nationwide — for instance, Hispanic women along the Rio Grande or Indigenous mothers in Minnesota.
KFF Health News found that none of the sites funded by the agency serves mothers in the Southeast, where the U.S. Census Bureau shows the largest concentration of predominantly Black rural communities. That omission exists despite a White House declaration to make Black maternal health a priority and statistics showing America’s maternal mortality rate has risen sharply in recent years. Non-Hispanic Black women — regardless of income or education level — die at nearly three times the rate of non-Hispanic white women.
“There’s a responsibility to respond to the crisis in a way that is more intentional,” said Jamila Taylor, chief executive of the National WIC Association, a nonprofit advocacy group for the federal Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children.
“Why isn’t HRSA stepping up to the plate, especially with this rural moms’ program?” Taylor said. According to a 2021 analysis of federal data, Black women living in rural areas also are more likely to die or experience more severe health complications during delivery than white women living in rural areas.
Experts say the failure of HRSA’s Rural Maternity and Obstetrics Management Strategies Program, or RMOMS, to reach predominantly Black communities in the rural South reveals structural inequities and underinvestment in a region where health care resources are scarce and have deteriorated.
The steady closure of hospitals in the region and widespread medical staffing shortages have hindered the ability of cash-strapped agencies and care providers to provide more than essential services. Many “don’t have sufficient resources” to apply for the grants, said Peiyin Hung, deputy director of the University of South Carolina’s Rural and Minority Health Research Center. Hung is also a member of the health equity advisory group for the maternal grant program.
“RMOMS really means to invest in the most underserved and the most disadvantaged communities,” she said, but because the program demands applicants have a network of hospitals and other care providers, she said, “the odds are not there for them to even try.”
Hung said she favors basing the awards on need and not solely on the quality of an application.
When KFF Health News first asked Tom Morris, associate administrator for rural health policy at HRSA, about the lack of grants in the rural South, he said the agency has an “objective review process” and regularly reviews the program to ensure it reaches the people who need it most.
“The rural rates of maternal mortality for African Americans is a real concern,” Morris said, adding, “I think you raised a good point there, and something we can focus on moving forward.”
So far, the maternal grants have gone to health care providers in Arkansas, Maine, Minnesota, New Mexico, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia, as well as two awards in Missouri.
States across the rural Southeast have not expanded Medicaid coverage to larger numbers of lower-income residents, which often means lower shares of patients have health coverage.
Rep. Robin Kelly (D-Ill.), whose district spans rural and urban areas, said it is her experience that “some of the neediest places don’t apply for the grants because they don’t have the personnel.”
“There needs to be special outreach,” said Kelly, who created legislation in 2018 to extend postpartum care after hearing from a constituent. “We need to take the extra steps that mean saving women’s lives.”
Several current grant winners said the federal agency does provide extensive technical assistance and is responsive to questions and concerns — but they also described how difficult it was to win the grants, which amounted to $1 million or less for last year’s winners.
“It’s an intimidating grant to apply for,” said Johnna Nynas, an obstetrician and gynecologist who wrote the maternal grant application for Sanford Bemidji Medical Center in Minnesota.
“I don’t want to admit how much of my own personal time I dedicated to this grant, writing it,” she said. Sanford won the grant in 2021.
Unlike applicants from smaller, cash-strapped health organizations, Nynas was able to solicit help from the internal grant team at Sanford Health, which operates a regional system including a health plan as well as hospitals, clinics, and other facilities in the Dakotas, Iowa, and Minnesota.
Nynas said four hospitals in the remote region of northern Minnesota, where Bemidji is located, have closed their labor and delivery units in recent years, leaving residents — including a significant number of Indigenous women — to drive 60 miles or more one way for care.
In an emailed statement released after announcing the more flexible expectations, Morris said the federal agency’s mission was to provide care for “the highest-need communities, and that means dedicating significant funds towards addressing the Black maternal health crisis.” The agency will no longer require state Medicaid programs to be partners on initial applications. It also loosened language about which clinics needed to be in the network.
This article was produced by KFF Health News, formerly known as Kaiser Health News (KHN), a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.
