Press Club panel addresses rising U.S. maternity mortality rate

Christy Turlington Burns and Nan Strauss of Every Mother Counts, a global nonprofit dedicated to improving access and removing barriers to care for women, presented a screening of two documentaries about the rising maternal mortality rate among American women March 8 and discussed the documentaries with National Press Club President Andrea Edney.

After experiencing complications post-childbirth about 14 years ago, Turlington Burns decided she had to look into how prevalent childbirth complications and postpartum medical issues were. What she found shocked her:

• The U.S. is the only industrialized country with a consistently rising maternal mortality rate, according to the World Health Organization.
• The World Health Org estimates 10-15 percent of women need Caesarian sections due to complications; the U.S. has more than double the recommended rate.
• One in four (84 million) people live in primary care shortage areas. That means there are not enough primary care providers in these areas, both rural and urban.
• Approximately 303,000 women die every year from pregnancy and childbirth-related complications; that’s one woman every two minutes.
• More than half of all maternal deaths in the U.S. can be prevented.
• Up to 98 percent of global maternal deaths are preventable, according to the Every Mother Counts 2016 Impact Report.

“I felt like, now that I know this information, I want to know more. What can I do?” said Turlington Burns. “So, I started talking to women and hearing their stories.”

So in 2010, Burns founded Every Mother Counts, which works to eliminate barriers that make childbirth and pregnancy unsafe, including lack of education for providers and communities, the long distances to facilities and lack of transportation to health care facilitates, and lack of medical equipment and basic supplies.

At the Club, viewers were treated to two short films in her documentary series, "Giving Birth in America," which illustrates the challenges facing pregnant women and mothers in the U.S., and aired on CNN in 2015.

Each short film focuses on a different U.S. state, and Club members watched similar, universal struggles women face when it comes to access, affordability, and health care inequities in Montana and New York.

Since then, the series has added Louisiana and Florida. Later this fall, the series will add California to the list.

After the screening, Edney moderated a panel with Burns and Strauss (the organization’s Policy and Advocacy Director), probed Burns' choice of the states she filmed in.

Largely, Turlington Burns chose New York because she’s given birth there twice, she explained. Though she suffered complications post-delivery, she acknowledged how fortunate she was to have had quick medical attention and easy access to the follow-up care she needed.

“It was scary and painful, yes, but I still felt incredibly empowered by my birth experience,” Turlington Burns said. But she recognizes that not every woman is so fortunate.

Some have to drive hours just to get care or don’t understand their health insurance or don’t feel like fighting a losing battle with the Medicaid reimbursement office, she said.

That’s why she and Strauss came to Washington to support the legislation, Senate Bill 783, the Improving Access to Maternity Care Act, she said.

“What this bill does is directs the Health Resources and Services Administration to collect data to identify where there is a shortage of maternity care resources,” said Strauss. Moving forward, health agencies will work to close those gaps, she added.

Meanwhile, Turlington Burns wants people to know that anyone can sign on to support the bill with little effort or time spent volunteering.

“This is one of those things that benefits everyone, to have this data,” she said. “It’s important to have these conversations whether you are soon to be expecting or not. Have these conversations with your neighbors, your friends. Information is power, and conversations are meaningful. It’s just as important to share the stories with great outcomes where women received great care as those who don’t.”