With statewide partners, the Jewish Healthcare Foundation helped to launch a Maternal Health Policy Collaborative to develop a prioritized list of recommendations for private and public stakeholders to rally around in 2024.
Over 25 maternal health organizations joined the growing policy collaborative and submitted their top three priorities prior to the first meeting on December 4. During the first meeting, the members discussed the two most frequently submitted priorities in the survey – reimbursement for doulas and creation of a perinatal behavioral health access program.
The intent of the collaborative is to enhance the existing work of perinatal health organizations across the Commonwealth and prioritize policies that could be acted on in one year's time.The collaborative's goal is to unite around a collective plan, which will be unveiled on PA Maternal Health Awareness Day January 23, 2024.
The following organizations are participating in the policy collaborative:Access Matters, Allies for Children, American College of Nurse-Midwives, Pennsylvania Section of Association of Women's Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses (AWHONN), Children's Hospital of Philadelphia Policy Lab, CoCoLife Black, Healthy Start, IMPLICIT Network, March of Dimes, Maternal & Family Health Services, Maternity Care Coalition, MCS Strategies, Patients R Waiting, PA WIC Association, Pennsylvania Academy of Family Physicians, Pennsylvania Doula Commission, Pennsylvania Health Funders Collaborative, Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children, Pennsylvania Perinatal Quality Collaborative, PGH Black Birth Workers, Philadelphia Health Partnership Foundation for Healthy Communities, The Alliance for Health Equity, Pennsylvania Chapter of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (PA ACOG), The Birthing Hut, The Foundation for Delaware County, The Hospital and Health System Association of Pennsylvania (HAP), Thriving PA,
The collaborative is open to all maternal and perinatal health stakeholder groups that would like to join and band together. New members can join and submit their priorities by completing the survey here.