State Health Dept. Awarded Grants to Help Lower Maternal Mortality Rate

(INDIANAPOLIS) – The Indiana State Department of Health (ISDH) has been awarded a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to expand and strengthen Indiana’s maternal mortality review process.

The five-year grant will allow for the establishment and implementation of best practices by using data to make recommendations to improve the health outcomes for women of reproductive age in Indiana.

“Accurately capturing what is happening when pregnant women die with no immediately obvious cause will help us create prevention programs at the local, state and national levels,” said Gretchen Martin, director of the ISDH Division of Fatality Review and Prevention. “We’re grateful for the ability to support our healthcare partners and local maternal mortality review teams in their efforts to investigate and document these tragedies as we look for ways to keep them from happening in the future.”

ISDH will receive more than $400,000 each year of the grant to develop and implement policies and protocols to prevent or manage maternal illness, improve timely recognition of early warning signs, ensure the appropriate escalation of care and provide effective discharge counseling and follow-up.

ISDH currently has a Maternal Mortality Review program and a committee that identifies and reviews all pregnancy-related and pregnancy-associated deaths in Indiana. As one of 25 recipients selected nationwide, ISDH will use this funding to better identify and characterize maternal deaths, leading to better-focused prevention strategies that reduce maternal deaths in Indiana.

The grant will also allow for better data collection, with the goal of reviewing every pregnancy-related and pregnancy-associated maternal death occurring in Indiana by the fifth year of the grant period.

You can learn more about ISDH’s maternal mortality review teams online at https://www.in.gov/isdh/28174.htm.

For important health and safety information, visit ISDH’s website at www.StateHealth.in.gov or follow us on Twitter at @StateHealthIN and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/isdh1.