Premier Statement on Black Maternal Health Week

By Deborah Kilday, MSN, Principal, Women and Infants Service Line, Premier Inc.

Premier is proud to be a part of Black Maternal Health Week, which highlights the urgent need to eliminate disparities in maternal-infant health and make America a safer place for Black women to give birth. Premier strongly supports the Biden-Harris Administration’s efforts and their Maternal Health Call to Action aimed at reducing maternal mortality and morbidity that disproportionately impacts Black mothers and families.

One of the principle ways we will tackle this problem is through improvement efforts, including leading HHS’s Perinatal Improvement Collaborative (HHS PIC), which helps hospitals meet the first-ever “Birthing Friendly” hospital quality designation focused on maternity care otherwise known as the CMS Maternal Morbidity Structural Measure. This HHS PIC brings together more than 220 hospital systems in all 50 states, using performance improvement tools and standardized data, representing more than 25 percent of all U.S. births, to measure outcomes for both mothers and babies to help paint a clearer picture of what is driving deaths and harm.

Premier is working with OWH, MoMMA's Voices and the National Birth Equity Collaborative to shed light on the source of the problem so that our nation can make healthcare safe and equitable for all new mothers.