Hannah Podhorzer

As part of an internship at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), I learned all about issues of maternal mortality and health disparities from epidemiologists and community health workers. To address the rising issue of maternal mortality in the United States, about half of states have implemented maternal mortality review committees (MMRCs), which are state-level committees that asses maternal mortality cases, their preventability, and allocate funding at various levels of impact to make positive change. These review committees are intended to be comprised of interdisciplinary teams of doctors, nurses, psychiatrists, cardiologists, and community health workers. However, often doctors end up comprising a majority of these committees. Since MMRCs are only present in 27 states, and their makeup is heavily biomedical-focused, and less community-focused, the purpose of this infographic I created is to deliver and package the importance of interdisciplinary MMRCs to state policymakers. This infographic has been shown at the MMRIA User Meeting and the CMS Maternal Health Care in Rural Communities Meeting in Washington, D.C.